(AUSTRALIA)
SBS News [Crows Nest, AU]
April 22, 2025
By Madeleine Wedesweiler
Around 12 months before he died Pope Francis said much progress had been made on holding people to account for committing sexual abuse within the Catholic Church. But victims say the next Pope needs to take the progress much, much further.
As billions around the world reflect on the legacy of Pope Francis, some are feeling re-traumatised by the Catholic Church and angry at the ways the institution hurt them.
Advocates have argued the next pope must do better than Pope Francis to combat the scourge of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church and urged the church’s head to enforce a zero tolerance policy and mandatory reporting to local authorities.
Judy Courtin is a senior lawyer and scholar who has spent decades representing and advocating for victims of sexual abuse within Australian institutions, including the Catholic Church.
She told SBS News that for some victim/survivors of Catholic institutional child sex crimes: “the pope’s death serves as a trigger of their life-long suffering and trauma”.
“The pope’s death is a reminder of how the Catholic Church failed them not only as children but also now as adults.
“It is a reminder of how the Catholic Church continues to re-abuse and re-traumatise survivor/victims by using the black letter of the law to further crush them.”
Courtin said survivors in Australia suffered a significant setback in seeking legal redress from the Catholic Church last year.
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The decision overturned on appeal a previous ruling by Victoria’s Supreme Court that the diocese was liable.
Courtin said the decision means: “Many thousands of survivor/victims have lost any chance of having a successful civil claim against the Church. This is in stark contrast to the children who were sexually assaulted by those in non-Catholic institutions.”
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She said many felt “things have gotten worse instead of better” for survivors of abuse in Catholic institutions since a landmark royal commission into child sex abuse in institutions delivered its findings in 2017, providing damning insight into the scale of abuse in church denominations.
During the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, a special hearing of all Catholic archbishops in Australia was held.
“There were multiple pledges and promises from the pope’s senior representatives in Australia [at the time] that they would be compassionate and that they would be model litigants and not unnecessarily fight victims,” Courtin said.
“These have not just proved to be empty promises from the hierarchy of the Church, but they are misleading and highly harmful statements.”
Courtin, writing at the time of the High Court’s decision in Ballarat, said it was a “retrograde decision”, adding: “ur High Court had a choice to expand the law on vicarious liability to be in line with the rest of the Common Law countries. Instead, it chose to abandon Australian victims/survivors of institutional child sexual assaults.”
Speaking on Tuesday, she added: “Survivors want meaningful support from the head pastor of the Catholic Church. Instead, they feel forsaken, forgotten, disenfranchised and further abused.”
When Pope Francis took over in 2013, the Catholic Church was embroiled in a global scandal over child sex abuse by priests, and the institution’s attempts to cover it up.
The pontiff sanctioned top clergy and made reporting abuse mandatory, but victims said more can and must be done.
In December 2014, Pope Francis established an international panel of experts to recommend how to protect minors, but the commission was mired in controversy.
In March 2023, the commission’s last remaining founding member, prominent German Jesuit priest Hans Zollner, resigned, expressing concerns over “responsibility, compliance, accountability and transparency”.
Pope Francis’s trip in January 2018 to Chile, where a clerical paedophilia scandal had caused outrage, was a turning point.
Francis initially defended a Chilean bishop against allegations he covered up the crimes of an elderly priest, demanding the accusers show proof of his guilt.
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He later admitted making “grave mistakes” in the case, then summoned all of Chile’s bishops to the Vatican, resulting in them all submitted their resignations. Three of the resignations were accepted.
In February 2019, in a historic first, Pope Francis defrocked former US cardinal Theodore McCarrick after he was found guilty by a Vatican court of sexually abusing a teenager in the 1970s.
In December 2019, the pope made complaints, testimonies and documents from internal Church trials available to lay courts. Victims were able to access their files and any judgments.
The same year, he made it compulsory to report suspicions of sexual assault or harassment to Church authorities — and any attempt at a cover-up.
Under pressure, the pope waived the statute of limitations in 2023 to allow potential disciplinary proceedings.
The international advocacy group Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, called Francis’ papacy a “preventable catastrophe for the children and vulnerable people who were abused during his tenure”.
“None of Francis’ reforms or initiatives have produced actual ‘zero tolerance’ for abuse or ended the culture of extreme secrecy and control that enables it,” SNAP said in a statement.
“The next pope must institute a zero tolerance law for sexual abuse that immediately removes abusive clergy and leaders who have covered up abuse from ministry and mandates independent oversight of bishops.
“He must use his authority to enact fundamental, institutional changes to end the systematic practice of sexual abuse and its concealment.”
In an interview with US broadcaster CBS News in May last year, the pope said sexual abuse “cannot be tolerated” under any circumstances in the Church, and “when there is a case of a religious man or woman who abuses, the full force of the law falls upon them. In this there has been a great deal of progress.”
With additional reporting by Agence France-Presse.
Readers seeking support can ring Lifeline crisis support on 13 11 14 or text 0477 13 11 14, Suicide Call Back Service on 1300 659 467 and Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800 (for young people aged 5 to 25). More information is available at beyondblue.org.au and lifeline.org.au.
Anyone seeking information or support relating to sexual abuse can contact Bravehearts on 1800 272 831 or Blue Knot on 1300 657 380.