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Catholic Church faces fresh child sex abuse threat, warns ex-top cleric

By Shannon Deery
Herald Sun
February 7, 2017

https://goo.gl/dcEbC4

Father Francis Moloney pictured in front of a portrait of St John Bosco, founder of the Salesians of Don Bosco.

[with video]

THE former head of one of the Catholic Church’s most abusive religious orders has warned of the potential for an escalation in child sexual abuse.

Fr Francis Moloney told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse today that the church was moving backwards in a potentially dangerous move.

He said a wave of conservatism moving through seminaries around the country threatened the good work being done by some in the church.

“We’ve got to face these truths,” he said.

“We have a major problem in the Australian Church.

“To say that the seminarians are all fine, the seminarians have been renewed, they’ve been exposed to this wider society, that is simply not true.

“The seminaries are closing their doors, they’re putting garments on the boys, they’re having long Latin liturgies, they like to walk around the streets in their (robes).

“So don’t tell me things are changing. A lot of people believe that this is the solution to the problem, make them more clerical than ever.”

Fr Moloney is a former head of the Australian chapter of the Salesians of Don Bosco.

World-first data released by the commission this week revealed 1 in 5 Salesians between 1950 and 2010 were alleged perpetrators of abuse.

The order was ranked the third worst in the country, and much of the abuse was perpetrated by its members at the notorious Salesian College, Rupertswood, in Sunbury.

“While I do think there is a genuine effort on the part of the bishops and the Catholic culture at large to somehow or other turn around this death dealing wheel, there is also a resistance to it and some real problems faced in such things as formation, ongoing formation, ongoing supervision,” Fr Moloney said.

“So we’ve come some way but the wheel’s still turning the wrong way.”

It came as Professor Patrick Parkinson, formerly employed by the Catholic Church, raised doubts about the institutions ability to change.

In a submission to the commission published this week, Prof Parkinson said the governance system of the church could make change difficult.

“Even if all Bishops and Religious Leaders at a given date signed up to offer commitments to the Australian people, these would not, and could not, bind their successors,” he said.

“That is the governance problem at the heart of Catholicism.

“It would be easy to write the problems off as a few ‘bad apples’; however, the problems that have brought the Church to the very edge of disaster and beyond, trashing its reputation as a moral leader, were never just because of a few bad apples.

“The problems were institutional and cultural. The question must, regrettably be asked, to what extent they still are.”

Contact: shannon.deery@news.com.au




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