AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald
August 24, 2015
Rachel Browne
Social Affairs Reporter
A retired Catholic bishop has told a royal commission that the Vatican failed to show leadership on the issue of clerical sexual abuse and Cardinal George Pell had “destroyed” a unified Australian response to victims.
Geoffrey Robinson, former auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Sydney and an architect of the church’s response to abuse claims, told a royal commission no one wanted to tackle the issue of clerical sexual assault.
In a day of testimony to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Bishop Robinson said sexual abuse had been covered up by the church and suspect priests were moved between parishes due to a failure of leadership within the church.
“The message the popes have been giving out have been very important and I think that some popes gave out the wrong message … and some archbishops too,” he said.
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The 78-year-old, who is undergoing chemotherapy for terminal cancer, told the royal commission he was shocked when he first heard allegations about Australian priests abusing children at a meeting of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference in the mid-1980s.
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