Wollongong's Catholic Bishop Celebrates 50 Years with Letter from Pope
By Nick McLaren
The Catholic Bishop of Wollongong, Peter Ingham, is celebrating 50 years as a priest with a letter from the Pope. The letter from Pope Francis, in Latin, conveyed his good wishes and blessing upon Bishop Ingham, the clergy and the people of the Diocese of Wollongong. Bishop Ingham was ordained into the priesthood in 1964 at St Mary's Cathedral in Sydney and installed as the fourth Bishop of Wollongong in 2001. He says becoming a priest was simply a matter of determining priorities. "I remember thinking to myself I don't care how hard this is I want to be a priest and I kept going," he said. "And there when various times when I thought if I become a priest I can't do this I can't do that and you had to work through that." The parishes of Wollongong, Fairy Meadow and Gwynneville will be celebrating Bishop Ingham's 50th anniversary at St Francis Xavier's Cathedral in Wollongong on Sunday. Meanwhile Bishop Ingham has spoken again of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. He says the response to the Gerard Nestor case in Wollongong shows that he and Bishop Philip Wilson were able to hold the line and keep children safe. Bishop Ingham says this was achieved by keeping Nestor out of the ministry while the case was dealt with by Roman and Australian authorities. "On the local level our procedures are very good and we worked at that in recent years really to ensure that people are respected and listened to and believed so that people can move forward," he said. It took nearly 20 years for the Vatican to dismiss Father John Nestor. He was convicted then acquitted of indecently assaulting a Wollongong alter boy in 1996.
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