AUSTRALIA
The Courier
Nino Bucci
30 Mar 2017
Across Victoria, on buildings associated with the Catholic church, blank rectangles are appearing.
They signify the fresh removal of plaques, installed decades earlier to signify the opening of a school, church, hospital or hall.
Etched on the plaques is a name: Most Reverend R. A. Mulkearns.
Bishop Ronald Austin Mulkearns blessed almost every Catholic building opened in the Ballarat diocese between 1974 and 1996. He also supervised one of the worst periods of clerical child sexual abuse in Australia.
The Ballarat diocese takes up most of western Victoria. It stretches from Casterton, near the South Australian border; to the coastline in the south; Daylesford to the east; and north to Mildura.
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