AUSTRALIA
The Age
April 4, 2016
Konrad Marshall
Senior writer
He was born Ronald Austin Mulkearns, in Caulfield. He died on Monday one of the most reviled Catholic leaders in the country.
He came into the world in 1930, and was ordained as a priest in 1956 – a full six decades ago.
He is now dead but the damage he did is long done. Indeed the suffering caused is continuing.
He was the sixth Bishop of Ballarat, a man Most Reverend, a Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, and the singular soul in charge of the largest Catholic diocese in Victoria, throughout its most shameful and destructive era, from 1971 to 1997.
Only this year he faced questions about that period, and his own catastrophic negligence in failing to halt the egregious behaviour of the black-collar criminals under his watch.
He was sorry, he said.
“I didn’t do enough,” he was quoted as admitting.
And yet not doing enough is not even close to the reason the world hates former bishop Ronald Mulkearns. The depth of feeling against the man comes from the belief that he actually did … nothing.
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