Pope may be backing away from promise to crack down on paedophiles, Catholic official says

By Samantha Donovan
ABC News
March 13, 2017

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-13/is-the-pope-backing-away-from-a-crackdown-on-paedophiles/8349252

Many saw Pope Francis' promise to tackle clerical sexual abuse as a promising sign.

Pope Francis' recent decision to reduce sanctions for convicted paedophile priests is a worrying sign, the CEO of the Catholic Church's Australian Truth Justice and Healing Council says.

"It's not a good indication of a strong zero-tolerance approach," Francis Sullivan said.

Pope Francis became leader of the world's Catholics just as Australia's royal commission into child sexual abuse was getting underway.

His initial promise to tackle clerical sexual abuse was a promising sign to Catholics like Mr Sullivan.

But in a recent case, the Pope overruled the advice of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to defrock an Italian priest, Mauro Inzoli.

That case was one of several in which the Pope overruled the advice given by the congregation.

"Unfortunately the Pope took a different view and the priest [Inzoli] was directed to a life of prayer and penance in some sort of prayer house or retreat seminary," Mr Sullivan said.

"It's not the ultimate penalty, and these days we need to have signals sent that when a person, particularly a priest, has been convicted of abusing a child, that the ultimate sanction should apply."

Mr Sullivan said it worried him that a number of initiatives, including calls to put in place some type of tribunal for bishops in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, "was not followed through by the bureaucracy".

It was recently announced at the royal commission that the Pope's child sexual abuse advisory group, the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, was under-resourced.

Mr Sullivan said while he had confidence in Cardinal Sean O'Malley, who heads up the group, three essential things needed to be in place for there to be "independent, fierce advice going to the Pope".

"One, it needs to be properly resourced in order to garner the proper advice," he said.

"Secondly, they need to be able to have people who are professional and independent of the bureaucracy.

"And thirdly, there needs to be a regular direct report to the Pope, not filtered through other bodies."

Mr Sullivan has called on the Australian Catholic community to push for real change.

"The Catholic community can be pretty passive when it comes to its leadership," he said.

"Anyone who is brought up Catholic is brought up in a hierarchal system where the clergy were placed on top and the laity on the bottom."

Mr Sullivan said in the past a priest would often never be challenged, and while at some levels that was a "culture past", the ramifications remained alive today.

"Our Catholic community now needs to call for stronger transparency and accountability from church leaders," he said.

"It needs to call for a stronger participation of lay people at the highest levels in the church government, and that includes women.

"It needs to call for a much more open and inclusive approach to being a church in Australia, so that we don't find ourselves dwindling away and becoming irrelevant."

Mr Sullivan will be in Rome next week to brief the Pope's Commission for the Protection of Minors on Australia's royal commission and the implications for the church.

Whether any of that information penetrates the Vatican bureaucracy and reaches the Pope remains to be seen.