AUSTRALIA
The Australian
January 6, 2017
DAN BOX
Crime reporterSydney
@DanBox10
Catholic leaders across Australia have welcomed a letter from the Pope saying the church “weeps bitterly” over the sexual abuse of children by priests, ahead of a final royal commission investigation into how these crimes could occur.
In what represents one of the most frank admissions of institutional failure by any pontiff, Pope Francis used the letter to say: “We … weep for this sin. The sin of what happened, the sin of failing to help, the sin of covering up and denial, the sin of abuse of power.”
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse will hold a final, three-week hearing next month attempting to establish how widespread this abuse is and what cultural issues allowed it to occur.
About 40 per cent of the thousands of victims who have given evidence in private to the commission say they were abused in Catholic institutions. The hearing is expected to investigate the role of the Vatican, canon law, celibacy and the use of secrecy within the church.
Brisbane archbishop Mark Coleridge said the letter, sent to bishops worldwide and which also talks about the trafficking and starvation suffered by children, was meant to support church leaders “to gather up the tears of the young”.
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