Bishops in Rome Tribunal’s Sights

By John Ferguson
The Australian
June 11, 2015

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Two of Australia’s highest profile Catholics could be scrutinised by the Vatican’s new sex abuse tribun­al empowered to try bishops accused of shielding abusers and to punish offenders.

Some of the church’s most senior figures in Australia, living and dead, have been accused, or were found either to have shielded ­perpetrators or failed to act to ­prevent further cases of sex abuse.

Former bishop of Ballarat Ron­al­d Mulkearns, now a priest, has been widely condemned for his failure to halt offending in his diocese, where hundreds of assaults occurred. However, he has not faced legal or internal action over his management, under which serial offender Gerald Ridsdale assaulted hundreds of minors.

Archbishop of Adelaide Philip Wilson is also fighting allegations he failed to report abuse allegedly committed by pedophile priest Jim Fletcher in the 1970s, while both were working in the Maitland diocese, near Newcastle, in NSW. Fletcher was jailed for raping a 13-year-old boy between 1989 and 1991, and died in 2006.