A Catholic priest expelled from the Melbourne diocese for sexual abuse has been allowed to resume his duties in an overseas parish despite an explicit warning from Archbishop Denis Hart to the church hierarchy in Bosnia.

The decision to assign Father Mato Krizanac to a parish in Bosnia raises further questions about the church's resolve to clamp down on clerical sex offenders and dismantle its entrenched culture of protecting abusers.

Father Mato Krizanac.

Father Krizanac, who spent more than a decade at the Croatian Catholic Church in Clifton Hill, was permanently stripped of all clerical duties in June by Archbishop Hart following a 12-month investigation into claims he abused an Adelaide girl in the mid-1980s.

But The Sunday Age can reveal that Father Krizanac immediately returned to a clerical role in Bosnia with the apparent permission of the Archbishop of Sarajevo, who ignored the damning findings of the church's independent commissioner in Melbourne, Peter O'Callaghan, QC.