AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald
The time has arrived for a royal commission to expose the gross abuse of power within the Catholic Church , writes JOANNE McCARTHY.
IT is the list that underscores a tragedy, a roll call of shame with crimes against children at its heart.
It is the genesis of decades of suffering, the silent wrecking ball in our community behind too many broken families, too many lost and shattered lives and too much pain.
It is the list the Catholic church tries to deny, minimise, consign to the past and dispatch as ‘‘ancient history’’, the ugly truth so cruelly dismissed by Australian Bishop Anthony Fisher in 2008 as people ‘‘dwelling crankily on old wounds’’.
It is a list reflecting the church’s offences against children in the Hunter and Central Coast regions since the early 1950s.
Some people are named, others can’t be for legal reasons. Some are dead but are included because documents and court decisions leave little or no doubt about offenders, or knowledge of offenders.
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