AUSTRALIA
ABC News
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. …
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.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.