BISHOP Didn't Tell Advisers All: Inquiry

9 News
December 8, 2015

http://www.9news.com.au/national/2015/12/09/03/34/bishop-didn-t-tell-advisers-all-inquiry

A former Victorian bishop would only tell his advisers what he believed he needed to share, a retired priest says.

Fr William Melican has told an inquiry he has no memory of Ballarat bishop Ronald Mulkearns discussing the real reasons for a number of priests being moved around the diocese.

The child abuse royal commission has heard Bishop Mulkearns told a 1977 College of Consultors meeting that Fr Paul David Ryan was in Washington DC and would be for at least two years.

Fr Melican said he could not recall being told why Ryan was in the US, where he was receiving therapy, nor, in 1978, about a complaint about Ryan's relationship with a teenager.

"He would share what he needed to share with us in his judgment, and that didn't necessarily mean everything," Fr Melican said of Bishop Mulkearns.

Fr Melican also said he had no memory of the reasons for Gerald Francis Ridsdale, one of Australia's worst pedophile priests, being moved between parishes and, in 1980, out of parish work.

Fr Melican said he did hear in 1989, when he was no longer a consultor, that Ridsdale had been sent to the US for treatment because of pedophilia.

The commission will hear from nine current or former priests in the Ballarat diocese who were members of the College of Consultors under Bishop Mulkearns or his vicars-general or bishop's secretaries.

They include Cardinal George Pell, Brisbane auxiliary bishop Brian Finnigan and the Australian Army's principal chaplain Monsignor Glynn Murphy.

Bishop Finnigan and Monsignor Murphy may appear as early as Wednesday, while Cardinal Pell will give evidence in Melbourne next week.