AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald
June 11, 2015
A Vatican tribunal to judge bishops accused of covering up child sex abuse is unlikely to investigate any Australian bishops until after the royal commission has concluded, the church’s Truth, Justice and Healing Council says.
The Vatican announced on Wednesday night that it had established a tribunal under its doctrinal arm, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “to judge bishops with regard to crimes of the abuse of office when connected to the abuse of minors”.
Victims’ advocates have for years called for the Vatican to establish clear procedures to make bishops more accountable for abuse in their dioceses, even if they were not directly responsible for it.
The Royal Commission Into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has heard how former Australian Bishop of Ballarat Ronald Mulkearns decided to move serial child sex offender Gerald Ridsdale around churches in Victoria and to a posting in Sydney, where he continued to abuse children. It also heard that Cardinal George Pell, then a priest, was previously a member of the College of Consultors, a group of priests who advised Bishop Mulkearns on such moves.
Francis Sullivan, chief of the Catholic Church’s Truth, Justice and Healing Council in Australia, said he “wouldn’t speculate” on whether the Vatican’s new tribunal would investigate Ronald Mulkearns.
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