OCTOBER 22, 2015
John Lyons
Associate Editor
Sydney
The Catholic Church has described its history regarding child abuse in Australia as “shameful, corrosive and complicit”.
The church says it now expects its liability exposure to be potentially $1 billion on top of payments already made.
Catholic spokesman Francis Sullivan said the church’s history was “littered with examples of cover-ups and crimes and of church leaders failing in one of the very basic tenets of their calling”.
Mr Sullivan is leading the church’s support for a national redress scheme to compensate victims of abuse. The scheme has been recommended by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
In a speech to the Australian Catholic University, Mr Sullivan said it was important Catholics did not succumb to a feeling that the commission or media were out to “get” the church.
“The facts are we are at the very centre of the royal commission because collectively the Catholic Church is responsible for more abuse than any other institution in Australia, public or private,” he said on Tuesday night.
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