AUSTRALIA
Illawarra Mercury
By KATE McILWAIN June 23, 2014
Some of Australia’s most senior Catholic leaders – as well as key Wollongong church figures – will appear before the royal commission into child sexual abuse’s investigation into Wollongong’s Catholic Diocese over the next two weeks.
The public hearing, which begins in Sydney on Tuesday, is the first time the actions of the Catholic Church in Wollongong have come under the microscope of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
It will focus on how the diocese and the Vatican responded to allegations of sexual assault against then Father John Gerard Nestor in the 1990s.
The witness list includes Adelaide Archbishop Phillip Wilson, who was Wollongong’s bishop from 1996 to 2000, and the general secretary of the Catholic Bishops Conference Father Brian Lucas.
Last week, former premier Barry O’Farrell called for Fr Lucas to be sacked, after Commissioner Margaret Cunneen’s report found he had failed to act since 1993 when he knew about child sexual abuse in the Newcastle Maitland Diocese.
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