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Bishop Bill Wright
Most Reverend William (Bill) Wright is the eighth Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle and is the pastoral leader of more than 150,000 Catholics in the region.
Welcome to this latest edition of the Year in Review of the Maitland-Newcastle Diocese. You will notice some changes in format and production that will, we trust, make the wealth of information more digestible, perhaps especially to those accessing it online.
In Rome on October 13, Pope Francis will canonise John Henry Newman, the great 19th-century English scholar, writer and preacher. I should like to be there, because Newman has been a significant religious influence in my life but, as I will have just returned from the diocesan pilgrimage to the Holy Land, it would be a bit rich to shoot off overseas again, even for JHN.
When first asked about the calls for a Royal Commission into the history of Child Sexual Abuse in this diocese, I said that I would welcome a public inquiry.