AUSTRALIA
9 News
AAP
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.
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