AUSRALIA
SBS
AAP
Pope Francis has not yet shown the type of leadership needed to deal with child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, a bishop has told a royal commission.
In a withering appraisal of how the church shrouds itself in secrecy when it comes to confronting its own faults, retired bishop Geoffrey Robinson said it had still not found the leadership it needed to tackle child sex abuse effectively.
The former auxiliary bishop of Sydney has for decades called for profound changes to deal with the church-wide blight.
On Monday he told the sex abuse royal commission those changes could mean examining the role of celibacy, putting women on the same footing as men and even re-visiting the misapplied notion of infallibility.
He said these suggestions would be viewed as heretical by most other bishops.
The church moved slowly, he said, and remarked that a 1922 papal instruction imposing a code of silence around child sex abuse crimes was so secret not even all bishops knew of it.
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