AUSTRALIA
The Australian
TESSA AKERMAN, RACHEL BAXENDALE THE AUSTRALIAN JULY 21, 2015
The bishop who failed to take action against Australia’s worst pedophile priest has been ordered to give court evidence next week, paving the way for him to face the child sex abuse royal commission.
Former bishop Ronald Mulkearns has for years avoided scrutiny over his alleged failure to curb systemic sex offending among his clergy in the west Victorian diocese of Ballarat, where the Catholic Church’s worst crimes were committed.
After having a stroke in 1998, Father Mulkearns avoided the Victorian parliamentary inquiry into child sex abuse in institutions, citing ill health, and had appeared unlikely to attend the royal commission into institutional responses.
The Geelong Magistrates Court yesterday ordered Father Mulkearns to give evidence next week in the case of former priest Robert Claffey, who is charged with historical sex offences.
Father Mulkearns was the bishop overseeing Gerald Ridsdale when he allegedly abused possibly hundreds of children in the Ballarat diocese and shuffled him from parish to parish, as well as to Sydney, where he offended further.
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