AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald
February 25, 2016
Beau Donelly
Reporter
A former bishop of Ballarat has apologised for failing to halt what he called a widespread and long-lasting “problem with priests” in Catholic schools and churches in the city.
Abuse survivors and their families have waited decades to hear from retired priest Ronald Mulkearns, who served as Bishop of Ballarat until the late 1990s, and has been accused of failing to prevent rampant child sex abuse during his 26-years as bishop.
On Thursday morning, the 85-year-old appeared via video link from his nursing home, Nazareth House, less than 3 kilometres from where the commission is sitting.
Bishop Mulkearns said he retired in 1997 because he wasn’t “doing the job as well as I felt I should be doing”.
Questioned by Counsel assisting the commission, Gail Furness, SC, about what he was not handling well at the time, he said the “problem with priests”.
“And I’d like to say, if I may, that I’m terribly sorry that I didn’t do things differently in that time, but I didn’t really know what to do or how to do it.
“I certainly regret that I didn’t do it differently with … paedophilia. We had no idea, or I had no idea of the effects of the indecent [assaults] that took place.”
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