A senior Catholic nun has apologised for the inadequate way she handled historical child abuse allegations against members of her order.
But the national head of the Sisters of Mercy, whose members ran a notorious central Queensland orphanage, says she still believes the allegations should never have been aired in parliament almost 20 years ago.
Sister Berneice Loch was the order's congregational leader in 1993 when former residents of the Neerkol orphanage near Rockhampton began coming forward with claims they had been physically and sexually abused by nuns and priests.
Without contacting them, she prepared statements (which were never released) defending the orphanage and saying there was no evidence of the claims.
She also publicly slammed a former state minister's decision to air the allegations in parliament in 1996 as "astounding and dismaying".
At a royal commission on Tuesday Sister Loch accepted her response had been inadequate, lacked compassion and exacerbated the suffering of abuse victims.
She said she was sorry and regretted not contacting those people when they first came forward.
"We had no processes in place (to deal with such claims)," Sister Loch told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
"We were very much in a phase of attempting to understand the issue and develop procedures."
However, Sister Loch maintained the parliamentary statement by then-families minister Kevin Lingard had sensationalised the issue.
"I don't believe it was an appropriate way to approach the matter," she said.
Mr Lingard's move resulted in numerous other former Neerkol residents coming forward.
Twelve of them and a past employee appeared before the commission in Rockhampton last week and painted a picture of a decades-long reign of terror perpetrated by nuns who allowed pedophile priests to prey on children.
Deceased former Neerkol chaplain Reginal Durham, jailed in 1999 for molesting a female parishioner, was the only person ever convicted.
In 1997 the Sisters of Mercy formally apologised to Neerkol abuse victims and paid out $646,000 in compensation while establishing a support committee.
Sister Loch is due to return to the witness box on Wednesday.
