The Most Reverend Paul Bird | |
|---|---|
| 8th Roman Catholic Bishop of Ballarat | |
| Church | Roman Catholic |
| Diocese | Ballarat |
| Appointed | 1 August 2012 |
| Predecessor | Peter Connors |
| Orders | |
| Ordination | 17 May 1975 by John Toohey (Bishop of Maitland) |
| Consecration | 16 October 2012 by Denis Hart (Archbishop of Melbourne) |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Paul Bernard Bird 17 July 1949 |
| Denomination | Roman Catholicism |
| Parents | Maurice and Olive Bird (née Burley) |
| Motto | Peace be with you |
Paul Bird C.Ss.R. (born 17 July 1949) is the Roman Catholic Bishop of Ballarat.
Bird was born in Newcastle, New South Wales, on 17 July 1949. He attended Catholic primary and high schools in the Newcastle area. He joined the formation program of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer in 1968 and studied at the Redemptorist seminary at Wendouree near Ballarat for four years before completing his studies at the Yarra Theological Union in Melbourne. [1]
Bird was ordained as a priest on 17 May 1975 and appointed Bishop of Ballarat on 1 August 2012. [2]
In January 2016, Bird became the first bishop in Australia to publicly join a global movement showing support for clergy child sex abuse victims by tying bright coloured ribbons to the Loud Fence outside St Patrick's Cathedral, Ballarat. Bird said that "If there is just silence between two people, then one doesn’t know what the other is thinking" and that "This gesture is a way to recognise the suffering and publicly show support to victims, survivors and their families." [3]
In 2016, Bird announced that the estate of a former Bishop of Ballarat, Ronald Mulkearns, which had been left to the diocese, would be set aside to help victims of child sexual abuse committed by priests in the diocese. As bishop, Mulkearns had facilitated moving the priests to different parishes. [4]
In August 2019, Bird acknowledged former Melbourne bishop George Pell's ties to the Ballarat diocese and also apologised for the history of sex abuse in the diocese. [5]
The Anglican Church of Australia, formerly known as the Church of England in Australia and Tasmania, is a Christian church in Australia and an autonomous church of the Anglican Communion. It is the second largest church in Australia after the Catholic Church. According to the 2016 census, 3.1 million Australians identify as Anglicans. As of 2016, the Anglican Church of Australia had more than 3 million nominal members and 437,880 active baptised members. For much of Australian history since the arrival of the First Fleet in January 1788, the church was the largest religious denomination. It remains today one of the largest providers of social welfare services in Australia.
George Pell was an Australian cardinal of the Catholic Church. He served as the inaugural prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy between 2014 and 2019, and was a member of the Council of Cardinal Advisers between 2013 and 2018. Ordained a priest in 1966 and bishop in 1987, he was made a cardinal in 2003. Pell served as the eighth Archbishop of Sydney (2001–2014), the seventh Archbishop of Melbourne (1996–2001) and an auxiliary bishop of Melbourne (1987–1996). He was also an author, columnist and public speaker. From 1996, Pell maintained a high public profile on a wide range of issues, while retaining an adherence to Catholic orthodoxy.
Monivae College is an independent Roman Catholic co-educational high day and boarding school of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart (MSC) tradition located in Hamilton, Victoria, Australia. It is part of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Ballarat. Set on 48 hectares, the college was founded in 1954.
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne is a Latin Rite metropolitan archdiocese in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Erected initially in 1847 as the Diocese of Melbourne, a suffragan diocese of Archdiocese of Sydney, the diocese was elevated in 1874 as an archdiocese of the Ecclesiastical Province of Melbourne and is the metropolitan for the suffragan dioceses of Sale, Sandhurst, Ballarat, and the Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy of Ss Peter and Paul. The Archdiocese of Hobart is attached to the archdiocese for administrative purposes. St Patrick's Cathedral is the seat of the Archbishop of Melbourne, currently Peter Comensoli, who succeeded Denis Hart on 1 August 2018.
The Diocese of Ballarat, based in Ballarat, Australia, is a diocese in the ecclesiastical province of Melbourne. It is a suffragan diocese of the Archdiocese of Melbourne and was established in 1874. Its geography covers the west, Wimmera and Mallee regions of Victoria. The cathedral is in St Patrick's Cathedral, Ballarat.
Roger Adrian Herft is a former bishop in the Anglican Church of Australia. He was the Archbishop of Perth from 2005 to 2017. He was previously the Bishop of Newcastle from 1993 to 2005 and the Bishop of Waikato in New Zealand from 1986.
St Patrick's College, sometimes referred to as St Pat's, Paddy's or SPC, is an independent Catholic secondary day and boarding school for boys, located in central Ballarat, Victoria, Australia. The school was founded by the Congregation of Christian Brothers in 1893, who continue to run the school through Edmund Rice Education Australia. The school provides education for boys from Year 7 to Year 12, with an emphasis on academic and sporting programs.
The Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle is a suffragan Latin Church diocese of the Archdiocese of Sydney, established in 1847 initially as the Diocese of Maitland and changed to the current name in 1995. The diocese covers the Hunter and Mid North Coast regions of New South Wales in Australia. The bishop of the diocese is Michael Kennedy.
Corpus Christi College is the regional seminary of the Roman Catholic dioceses in Victoria and Tasmania, Australia. The seminary was founded by Daniel Mannix on 25 December 1922, at the Werribee Park Mansion in Werribee.
Philip Edward Wilson was an Australian Roman Catholic prelate who was the eighth Archbishop of Adelaide from 2001 to 2018. He was President of the Australian Catholic Bishops' Conference from 2006 to 2010. From 1996 to 2001 Wilson was bishop of the Diocese of Wollongong, where he gained a reputation as a "healing bishop" for handling child-abuse scandals.
The Catholic sexual abuse scandal in Victoria is part of the Catholic clerical sexual abuse in Australia and the much wider Catholic sexual abuse scandal in general, which involves charges, convictions, trials and ongoing investigations into allegations of sex crimes committed by Catholic priests and members of religious orders. The Catholic Church in Victoria has been implicated in a reported 40 suicides among about 620 sexual abuse victims acknowledged to the public after internal investigations by the Catholic Church in Victoria.
Catholic sexual abuse cases in Australia, like Catholic Church sexual abuse cases elsewhere, have involved convictions, trials and ongoing investigations into allegations of sex crimes committed by Catholic priests, members of religious orders and other personnel which have come to light in recent decades, along with the growing awareness of sexual abuse within other religious and secular institutions.
Gerald Francis Ridsdale is an Australian laicised Catholic priest and sex offender. He was convicted between 1993 and 2017 of a large number of child sexual abuse and indecent assault charges against 65 children aged as young as four years. The offences occurred from the 1960s to the 1980s while Ridsdale worked as a school chaplain at St Alipius Primary School, a boys' boarding school in the Victorian regional city of Ballarat.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was a royal commission announced in November 2012 and established in 2013 by the Australian government pursuant to the Royal Commissions Act 1902 to inquire into and report upon responses by institutions to instances and allegations of child sexual abuse in Australia. The establishment of the commission followed revelations of child abusers being moved from place to place instead of their abuse and crimes being reported. There were also revelations that adults failed to try to stop further acts of child abuse. The commission examined the history of abuse in educational institutions, religious groups, sporting organisations, state institutions and youth organisations. The final report of the commission was made public on 15 December 2017.
Ronald Austin Mulkearns was the bishop emeritus of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Ballarat in Ballarat, Australia, a diocese in the ecclesiastical province of Melbourne. He resigned as bishop on 30 May 1997. The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse found that Mulkearns was "derelict in his duty".
Peter Joseph Connors is an Australian prelate of the Catholic Church who served as Bishop of Ballarat from 1997 to 2012.
Revelation is a 2020 Australian documentary series directed by Nial Fulton and Sarah Ferguson. The series follows the criminal trials of three Catholic priests accused of child sexual abuse.
Patrick Daniel Cotter was an Irish-born Catholic priest who was incardinated in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle in Australia from 1938 to 2007.
Michael Robert Kennedy is an Australian prelate of the Catholic Church who was appointed bishop of the Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle in February 2023. He was bishop of Armidale from 2012 to 2023.
Brian Finnigan is the auxiliary bishop emeritus of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Brisbane. He retired as auxiliary bishop on 30 December 2015 amid accusations he was not honest when giving evidence before the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. He was consecrated by Archbishop John Bathersby on 8 April 2002.
| Province of Sydney |
| ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Province of Melbourne |
| ||||
| Province of Brisbane |
| ||||
| Province of Perth |
| ||||
| Province of Adelaide |
| ||||
| Immediately subject to the Holy See | |||||
| Eastern Rite Eparchies | |||||
| Apostolic Nunciature to Australia | |||||
 | This article about a Catholic bishop or archbishop from Australia is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
