The Pell Centre at Australian Catholic University in Ballarat will probably keep its name for now, what with ACU stating it will not comment on the conviction of George Pell for child sex crimes, until “all legal avenues … are complete.”

They don’t like to rush things at ACU. Back in 2014 ACU’s Ballarat campus took retired bishop Ronald Mulkearn’s name off a lecture theatre after he was named in a Victorian inquiry as having protected paedophile priests.

Back then (CMM July 21 2014) asked if the university would also strip him of his honorary doctorate and was told nothing-doing, that; “the decision to award an honorary doctorate takes into account all information known to the university at the time of the award. The university has not revoked any honorary doctorates in its 25-year history and has no immediate plans to do so.”

But this changed in 2017, when the Royal Commission into Institutional Child Abuse, investigated Mulkearns and called his behaviour “appalling.”

The university now tells CMM that it revoked his hon doc that year, “the basis of the revocation was uncontested admissions made by Bishop Mulkearns before the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.”