The Catholic church did not take abuse allegations seriously enough and showed too much sympathy to paedophile priests, Melbourne’s archbishop has admitted.

Archbishop Denis Hart said the church had come down too often on the side of the priest when allegations were made.

“I would see that people sometimes have a greater deal of sympathy for a church person than they should have, and they didn’t sufficiently identify the crime that that person had committed for what it was,” Hart told the child abuse royal commission on Tuesday.

“I think these times have made us see quite clearly both in what we think and know but also in our action what we must do.”

Hart also acknowledged that apologies he had sent to victims of paedophile priests were identical form letters with just the names changed.

Hart said he was unable to know the confidential details of each case, so the letters he signed from 2001 to 2013 were general apologies.

“They are very, very similar at least. Some of them may be identical,” he said.

In the past year he had tried to get at least some minimal information about victims’ cases so the letters could be more personal.

“It was never indicated to me that this was unhelpful. Had it been, I would have certainly acted sooner,” he said.

Hart said he wanted to make sure victims did not feel they were being “fobbed off” by the church.

The letters were sent as part of settlements under the church’s Melbourne Response, set up in 1996 to handle allegations of clergy sex abuse in the archdiocese.

Hart said there had been a tendency to minimise sexual abuse by priests in the past.

“I would have to admit that with what we have been doing now shows that there was too much of a tendency to minimise the seriousness of the matter, and I repudiate that totally,” Hart said.

Hart said he “absolutely accepted” there had been a problem with the abuse of children by ordained people.

But he denied that some senior Catholic people saw abuse as a moral rather than a criminal issue.

“I don’t subscribe to that in any way, shape or form,” he told the inquiry.

Today there was careful assessment of whether people were medically and psychologically fit to join the priesthood, he said.

“I have some hesitations about the limitations in former times,” he said.

Hart said the church was taking action to make sure the mistakes of the past were not repeated.

“When young people go to a parish to work as students, there’s always a review group, including women, who look at how they interact with people,” Hart said.

He said they were much better at determining who would not be suitable for the priesthood, but it was a process that needed continual work.