Press and politicians agree with resignation

Sydney's The Telegraph says Mr Hollingworth had no choice but to quit.

"He would have been indulgent and risked misusing his position had he hung around to ponder his personal affairs".

Although Mr Hollingworth might be leaving office in disgrace, The Telegraph says that "by staying put he would have guaranteed that judgment."

We just do not know much about what skeletons may reside in what clerical cupboards The Age

The Sydney Morning Herald says Mr Hollingworth's resignation will allow public confidence to be restored in the office of governor-general.

It says he resigned not over recent rape allegations but because of public revulsion at an earlier scandal over a paedophile priest when he was Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane.

Australians were unimpressed, it says, with "his decision to place the interests of child abusers and the church above the interests of people in his pastoral care".

Melbourne's The Age runs an article by Gerard Henderson, the executive director of the Sydney Institute, who says the Hollingworth affair has ruled out any further religious dignitaries becoming governor-general.

From John Howard down they wanted Hollingworth to roll his swag The Australian

According to Mr Henderson, the outgoing governor-general is a man "high on pomposity and ceremony and not at all short on pride", whose demise was due to "his own inadequate performance in office".

Mr Henderson also criticises Prime Minister John Howard for appointing a bishop in the first place.

"Not only did this blur the distinction between church and state, it was risky because all churches are inherently private organisations. We just do not know much about what skeletons may reside in what clerical cupboards."

Glenn Milne, the chief political correspondent for Australian television�s Seven Network, says there is little sympathy for Mr Hollingworth in the government.

Writing in Sydney's The Australian, he says "From John Howard down they wanted Hollingworth to roll his swag."

The Australian also questions the judgment of Mr Howard, the hitherto "teflon prime minister", in appointing Mr Hollingworth.

It has some sympathy for the "slow bleeding to death of Peter Hollingworth's vice-regal career", saying that when he was asked to represent Australia in the new millennium, he "seemed unable to shake himself free of attitudes that most of us now associate with the 1950s".

BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.