AUSTRALIA
news.com.au
Megan Neil
Australian Associated Press
The Catholic Church in Australia believes it has come a long way from its dark history of child sexual abuse. The answer to just how far may rest with Rome.
Australia’s child sex abuse royal commission is devoting the next three weeks to trying to find out why widespread abuse occurred over decades in Catholic institutions.
Francis Sullivan, chief executive of the church’s Truth Justice and Healing Council, argues the church today is a very different place to what it was when most of the abuse examined by the royal commission took place.
“The type of outfit which we call the Catholic Church in Australia today is light years away from what it was in the ’60s and ’70s,” Mr Sullivan told AAP.
The commission will release data revealing the extent of child sex abuse in Catholic institutions in Australia, based on claims made to the church, as part of its 15th and final public hearing focused on the church that begins in Sydney on Monday.
Its scope is broad and covers issues fundamental to the Catholic Church as a whole: its structure and governance including the role of the Vatican, canon law, clericalism, mandatory celibacy, confession and the screening, training and supervision of priests and other religious.
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