Catholic Church Focus of Abuse Inquiry

By Megan Neil
7 News
May 5, 2016

https://au.news.yahoo.com/a/31527946/catholic-church-focus-of-abuse-inquiry/

The royal commission will hold a hearing into the Catholic Church's handling of complaints in 2017.

The Catholic Church has produced some of Australia's worst pedophiles, and the child sex abuse royal commission wants to know why.

The commission's numerous investigations into child abuse in a number of Catholic institutions throughout Australia will culminate in a final hearing into the Catholic Church in February, 2017.

The commission is seeking submissions about any factors that may have contributed to child sex abuse in Catholic institutions or affected the church's response.

The structure and governance of the Catholic Church and the Vatican's role are among the issues that will be examined, along with what the church has done and plans to do to protect children and prevent abuse.

Other issues identified by the commission include canon law, mandatory celibacy and the selection, screening, training and ongoing support and supervision of working priests.

"We wish to examine to what extent these and other factors have contributed to the occurrence of child sexual abuse in Catholic institutions, or whether these issues have affected the institutional response to child sexual abuse," commission chief executive Philip Reed said in a statement on Thursday.

The final hearing will also reveal data on the extent of child sexual abuse within Catholic institutions in Australia.

The church's Truth, Justice and Healing Council chief executive Francis Sullivan has acknowledged the Catholic Church is the single largest institutional setting in which children have been abused.

The 14 Catholic-focused public hearings have revealed those elements of its culture that promote secrecy, concealment and complicity, he said last month.

"Most of all they showed that the instinctive reaction to defend the church, to prevent scandal and to uphold institutional reputation drove the management of child sex abuse cases and relegated the needs of victims below those of the church," Mr Sullivan said.

"Maladministration and clericalism, along with abuse of power and privilege, ensured that the sex abuse scandal was concealed for so long."