AUSTRALIA
ABC – PM
DAVID MARK: The Vatican has appointed an Australian social welfare worker with expertise in family and disability services and child protection to the Vatican’s Commission for the Protection of Minors.
The appointment comes one year after Pope Francis set up the special panel to examine the Catholic Church’s child protection policies and improve its response to victims of child sexual abuse.
Kathleen McCormack, from Wollongong, is the former director of Catholic Care and among eight new members of the 17-person panel.
She’s speaking here to PM’s Emily Bourke about the panel and how she hopes to influence its work.
KATHLEEN MCCORMACK: It’s really about particularly ensuring best practice and education, formation and training programs to respond to the prevention of abuse of minors.
EMILY BOURKE: It’s been 12 months since this commission was established, how do you think it’s been working so far and how do you think the church has changed, if at all, the way it’s handling the issue of child protection?
KATHLEEN MCCORMACK: What’s been encouraging to me is the Holy Father wants to reach out to all areas of the globe and to have, because some countries have got better practices than others, and he wants to make sure there’s a mutual sharing and that people are really about no longer a culture of silence, it’s about the protection of children.
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