AUSTRALIA
Geelong Advertiser
A VICTORIAN bishop says he regrets that he did not deal with pedophile priests properly and admits he tried to protect the church’s reputation.
Bishop Ronald Mulkearns, who knew about pedophile priests and moved them between parishes, said to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse he did not know how to deal with abuse complaints while head of the Ballarat diocese from 1971 to 1997.
“I certainly wanted to protect the reputation of the church. I wanted to make sure these incidents didn’t happen in the future and tried my best to work in such a way that it didn’t happen again,” he told the child abuse royal commission on Thursday.
Mulkearns had been living independently in Aireys Inlet, but has recently moved into an assisted living facility in Ballarat.
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