As Australia's five-year Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse drew to a close in 2017, it felt as if the winds of change were blowing through the Catholic Church.

Five Australian bishops stood up in the commission courtroom and made a public and historic act of contrition for its terrible history of clergy abuse.

Archbishop of Sydney Anthony Fisher described the response of the church to allegations of child sex abuse as "criminally negligent", Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Brisbane said the defence of the church made the clergy "blind to individuals" and Archbishop Denis Hart of Melbourne said, "[Archbishops] just didn't drill down to the reality ... They just sort of floated above it".

"The way we act now is very, very different," said Archbishop Hart, who has since retired.

Fast forward two years, in the Supreme Court of Victoria in the case of JCB v Bishop Paul Bird for the Diocese of Ballarat, and you might question that last claim.

Here were lawyers for the very same Catholic Church launching a defence which rejected some of the royal commission's key findings in relation to one of its most notorious paedophile priests.

The many good Catholics who espouse Christian values of decency and kindness and social justice might question the expenditure of the proceeds of their collective collection plates to mount that defence.

Ballarat Bishop Paul Bird. ( ABC News: Charlotte King )

An astonishing claim

The case refers to one Gerald Ridsdale — not just Australia's most prolific paedophile priest, but one of the country's worst paedophiles full stop — and the knowledge of his offending by the then-bishop of Ballarat, the now-deceased Ronald Mulkearns.

Lawyers for the church in the case minimised Mulkearns' knowledge of Ridsdale's prior offending in 1982, when the victim, JCB, was anally raped at the age of nine in Mortlake, a tiny town in Victoria's western district.

Internal church documents tendered to the commission suggested every boy in one class at the Mortlake parish school, St Colman's, was abused.

Ridsdale himself told Catholic Church insurers he "went haywire there. Altar boys, mainly".

"Mortlake imploded over the Ridsdale saga," Broken Rites advocate Dr Wayne Chamley told me.

Gerald Ridsdale is one of the country's worst paedophiles. ( Supplied )

"The whole family networks just started tearing themselves apart over what happened — the shocking tragedy in that town."

In a pre-trial judgment in the JCB v Bishop Bird case before the courts now, Justice Michael McDonald alluded to the church seeking to wind back what Mulkearns knew about Ridsdale before he allowed this tragedy to occur.

"By their defence, the defendants have put in issue the extent of Mulkearns' knowledge of Ridsdale's inappropriate sexual behaviour with minors prior to Ridsdale's appointment at Mortlake," Justice McDonald wrote in the judgement.

The judge pointed out that in doing so, they contradict the church's own submissions to the royal commission via its Truth Justice and Healing Commission.

This is an astonishing claim given that from 1993, the church's own insurers would not indemnify for claims past 1975 because of the knowledge that the Ballarat Diocese had of Ridsdale's offending.

This case is historic because it is the first case in Victoria since the State Government eliminated what was known as "The Ellis Defence" — the controversial precedent that the Catholic Church had no legal personality and therefore could not be sued.

It's high stakes and the Diocese of Ballarat, just as it did before the royal commission exposed its terrible history, is strenuously defending the case.

Former Victorian Catholic bishop Ronald Mulkearns, left, in2015, with lawyer David Grace, QC. Mulkearns died in 2016. ( ABC News: Margaret Paul )

Royal commission was unequivocal

In its final report in 2017, the royal commission made unequivocal findings that the Diocese of Ballarat had known since the early 1960s of Ridsdale's proclivities, when an earlier bishop, James O'Collins, warned him that he would be "off the mission" if such a thing happened again.

But the commission found by the time of the offending against JCB in April 1982, there was no question that Mulkearns knew.

"It is clear that Bishop Mulkearns should not have appointed Ridsdale parish priest of Mortlake, given his knowledge of the priest's history," the commission found, using terms like "extraordinary failure" and "grossly inadequate" to describe Bishop Mulkearns' response.

"We are satisfied that his priority was to protect the reputation of the church and to avoid scandal, rather than responding to the pastoral needs of the children Ridsdale had sexually abused in the wider community," the commissioners found.

The bitter pill for the children of Mortlake including JCB is that Ridsdale would never have darkened their collective doorsteps had the bishop not known about this history, and accordingly moved "Father Gerry" from parish to parish, to abuse ever more kids.

Not just that, Mulkearns wasn't the only one in the diocese whom the royal commission found had knowledge of the offending by that time.

It found Mulkearns' Monsignor, Leo Fiscalini, knew. The bishop's private secretary, Brian Finnigan, knew. As 1982 wore on, nun and teacher Sr Kathleen McGrath became aware and had asked her colleague, Sr Patricia Vagg, to ask the bishop to do something about it, to no avail. Consultor priest Dan Torpy knew — as evidenced in a 1981 note to Mulkearns where he talked about the whispers about the "situation" at a previous parish.

"Very nasty," Torpy wrote.

Cardinal Pell accepted that Mulkearns knew about Gerald Ridsdale's offending. ( AAP: Daniel Pockett )

Pell in front of the commission

George Pell, then a priest in the Ballarat Diocese and a consultor to Mulkearns, was asked extensively about what he knew during his four-day evidence to the royal commission in February 2016, video-linked from Rome because he was then too ill to fly.

Pell's position had been, essentially, that he and the other consultors had been deceived by Mulkearns. So even Pell accepted the bishop knew.

The sections of the royal commission's final report relating to Pell's knowledge of this and other offending were redacted by the commission in 2017 because Pell himself had by that time been charged with multiple historic sexual crimes against children.

Pell was found guilty of five offences in December last year and those convictions were made public in February. He is in jail awaiting an appeal next Wednesday and Thursday.

The royal commission's final report also does not look good for him and when the redactions are removed he may well be added to the list of consultors in the Ballarat Diocese who had some knowledge of Ridsdale's offending.

"We do not accept that Bishop Mulkearns lied to his consultors," the commissioners wrote in their final report.

"It is inconceivable ... that the Bishop deceived his consultors by not telling them the true reason [that Ridsdale was being moved around].

"There would be little utility in doing so.

"A contrary position is not tenable."

So whatever happens in Pell's appeal next week, his legacy may remain tarnished when the redacted findings become public.

Gerald Ridsdale with Cardinal George Pell. ( ABC News )

Airbrushing history

Given all of this, that the lawyers acting for Bishop of Ballarat, Paul Bird, could make the argument they have is surprising to say the least.

Bishop Bird is the leader of a diocese in a church which preaches a message of love thy neighbour. That he could instruct his lawyers to take this position — effectively airbrushing history — seems equally astonishing.

Justice MacDonald also questioned the church lawyers about another submission — that while they accepted Ridsdale was a priest during the offending period, they did not admit he was "imbued with special authority, power, control and influence over members of the community" and he was not carrying out priestly duties at all times.

"A legal practitioner... must certify that, on the factual and legal material available, there is a proper basis for each denial and non-admission in a defence," Justice McDonald said.

"A question arises as to whether the defendants and their legal representatives have a proper basis for [these non-admissions and denials]."

Like every case of this nature, JCB v Bishop Bird is one of David and Goliath — a vulnerable survivor of a childhood trauma who struggles with the lifelong consequences, against a well-resourced and powerful institution which does not deny what happened to him when he was nine, but fights him nonetheless.

The power imbalance could not be more great.

And that's why, yet again, this is disappointing from the Catholic Church.

Louise Milligan is a reporter for Four Corners and the author of Cardinal, The Rise and Fall of George Pell.