Michael Hill's depraved behaviour began long before it came to the attention of church authorities.

He was giving cause for concern as long ago as the Seventies.

Hill was ordained in 1960 and worked in Surrey and Sussex. In 1981 he was moved to Heathfield.

He was then ordered to undergo counselling and assessment after complaints about him.

In 1983, when more specific and more serious allegations were made, his licence to work in a parish was withdrawn.

He was sent to a church therapy centre, where experts said he was still a danger to children.

Hill was said to be suffering from a "psychosexual disorder" and had admitted episodes of sexual behaviour with children.

But in 1985 Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, then Bishop of Arundel and Brighton, made Fr Hill chaplain of Gatwick Airport, believing that the priest would not have contact with children.

Hill went on to abuse a boy with learning disabilities who had missed his flight.

He was permanently suspended from working in a ministry after a trial in 1997 at which he admitted nine offences of indecent assault and one of gross indecency, involving nine boys.

When he was released from jail in 2000, after serving three years of his five-year sentence, he was allowed to live free in a £100,000 church flat near a primary school in Lingfield, Surrey.

He attended therapy sessions at the Wolvercote Clinic for sex offenders where, believing he would not be prosecuted, he confessed to more attacks.

Meanwhile, police were investigating complaints from other alleged victims who had come forward following the original court case.

Hill was charged with assaults involving five boys and a girl.

But the prosecution agreed not to proceed with them after he pleaded guilty to assaults involving three boys aged 10 to 14 which he committed between 1969 and 1987.

According to some reports, Hill now faces permanent removal from the priesthood by the Vatican.

The scandal, which came at a time of other paedophile allegations against priests in Britain, severely embarrassed the Roman Catholic church.

Lord Nolan was asked to set up an inquiry which later recommended new procedures for vetting priests.

Hill's activities also sparked calls for the resignation of Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, now Archbishop of Westminster and leader of Roman Catholics in England and Wales.

The Cardinal accepted in a letter to The Times published today that his decision to appoint Hill to the Gatwick Airport post - made after he received conflicting psychiatric reports about the priest's condition - was a mistake.

But he wrote: "To the best of my knowledge every other allegation made against a priest in my time at Arundel and Brighton was reported to, or investigated by, either the social services, or the police, or both."

The church had set up an independent review of child protection under Lord Nolan in 2000 and had adopted strict guidelines last year, he said.