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Pope Influenced by Pell on Approach to Child Sex Abuse

By Sydney Morning Herald
Senior Writer
December 7, 2013

http://www.smh.com.au/national/pope-influenced-by-pell-on-approach-to-child-sex-abuse-20131206-2ywot.html

Advice: Cardinal George Pell. Photo: Supplied

The Pope's decision to set up a council of experts and lay people to advise him how to stop the scourge of child sex abuse is based on Australia's approach, leading Catholics say.

Cardinal George Pell "had a big influence on this, because the announcements from Rome certainly seem to replicate the approach we have taken here", believes Francis Sullivan, head of the Truth, Justice and Healing Council, established last year to lead the Australian Catholic church's response to the child sex abuse Royal Commission.

Pope Francis took up the suggestion from his council of eight cardinals which includes George Pell, the Archbishop of Sydney. After they met in Rome this week, US Cardinal Sean O'Malley, Archbishop of Boston, said at a Vatican media conference the new committee would look at how better to protect children in the church including screening checks for would-be priests, codes of professional conduct and co-operatiing with civil authorities to report crimes. The committee would work on pastoral aid for victims, their families and affected communities, including "mental health help", Cardinal O'Malley said.

Mr Sullivan said the idea "echoed" the Truth, Justice and Healing Council's use of experts who "give strong independent advice to place victims first and make it clear that the church can't approach clerical sex abuse from a protective-defensive stance".

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"As a Catholic, it is shaming to hear that this went on," said Melbourne military analyst Paul Sheehan, 36, a volunteer for Catholic Voices Australia. He said nothing could bring "true justice" to sex abuse victims who "still need as much help as we can give them" but "this is a step forward at the highest level".

In November a Victorian parliamentary inquiry into child sex abuse accused the Catholic Church of trivialising sex abuse complaints in order to save its reputation and said an independent, government-monitored authority should take over from the church's in-house systems for dealing with victims.

On Monday the Royal Commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse begins public hearings into the Catholic Church, focusing on the "Towards Healing" protocol for sex abuse complaints and how it affected four victims in northern NSW.

"Towards Healing" is condemned by many victims as a "quasi-judicial", adversarial process which has re-traumatised victims and placed the church's reputation and finances before their pastoral care.

Mr Sullivan predicts Catholics and non-Catholics alike will be "horrified" at the "shocking, shocking experiences and behaviour" to be revealed. But he said the church's disposition would be ''open, transparent and humble''.

''It is not about what we as Catholics feel, it is about what is important to happen so that those who have been damaged can live with some hope that their lives will be improved".

He said he hoped the Vatican committee "will hear frank and fearless advice from experts and will be challenged time and again to put victims needs first, not the cautious, hyper-defensive and protective agendas of the church bureaucrats".

The Vatican said it could not respond to questions about abuse from the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child because it was not responsible for the actions of individual clergy.

 

 

 

 

 




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