AUSTRALIA
The Age
December 7, 2015
Jane Lee
A dying retired bishop who moved paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale to chuches around Victoria for decades could still be called to give evidence at a royal commission amid claims he covered up and ignored complaints of clergy abuse.
Ronald Mulkearns, 85, the bishop of Ballarat from 1971 to 1997, was expected to appear at the commission’s second hearing into Ballarat Catholic Church authorities.
Senior counsel asssisting the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Gail Furness, SC, said in her opening address on Monday that the commission had accepted “medical advice that Bishop Mulkearns is receiving palliative care and is unfit to give evidence in this public hearing.”
“Bishop Mulkearns remains subject to a summons to appear before the commission and, should his health improve sufficiently, the royal commission intends to call him to give evidence in public.”
Ms Furness said the commission would hear evidence of Bishop Mulkearns’ repeated refusals to deal with complaints of clergy abuse from a nun, a mother of a survivor and a fellow priest.
The commission has previously heard that Bishop Mulkearns was first told of Ridsdale’s offending in 1975, but moved him to numerous parishes until Risdale was charged and later convicted of multiple child sex offences in 1993.
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