Former Bishop Ronald Mulkearns May Not Make Abuse Inquiry

By John Ferguson
The Australian
June 3, 2015

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Former bishop of Ballarat Ronald Mulkearns’s bid to use his health to avoid official scrutiny over his alleged bungling of child sex abuse cases has been severely undermined by his attendance last month at a Sydney dinner for the nation’s retired senior Catholic clergy.

Bishop Mulkearns was accompanied in Sydney by his successor, Peter Connors, as they celebrated at an annual dinner for retired bishops.

Bishop Mulkearns’s attendance has raised eyebrows among some senior church figures, amid expectations he would avoid ­attendance at the child abuse royal commission, as he did with a Victorian parliamentary inquiry in 2013, by citing his health.

The attendance of Bishop Connors by Bishop Mulkearns’s side is significant because the church entrusted him with trying to resolve the bitter fallout caused by the child abuse that occurred across the western Victorian diocese during Bishop Mulkearns’s 26-year reign.

Hundreds of children were abused in the diocese of Ballarat during the 1960s, 70s and 80s.