AUSTRALIA
Sydney Catholic
[with video]
My dear friends,
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has begun its final three-week review of the performance of the Catholic Church in Australia. And what has been revealed has already been harrowing.
I have personally felt shaken and humiliated by this information, as I have by other important revelations in the Royal Commission to date. The Church is sorry and I am sorry for past failures that left so many so damaged. I know that many of our priests, religious and lay faithful feel the same: as Catholics we hang our heads in shame.
We have already heard many distressing and shameful cases of sexual abuse told to the Royal Commission by courageous survivors. Today we heard these individual stories aggregated in data presented to the Commission on the proportion of priests and religious with claims of abuse made against them since 1950.
To my shame and sadness it would seem that Australia-wide as many as 384 Catholic diocesan priests, 188 religious priests, 597 religious brothers and 96 religious sisters have had claims of child sexual abuse made against them since 1950. Claims have also been made against 543 lay church workers and another 72 whose religious status is unknown.
Unlike previous hearings based on particular cases or events, and involving interviews of those connected with those events in some way, this hearing will address ‘the big picture’ and feature expert witnesses along with Church leaders and lay people, some of whom will be drawn from our Archdiocese. The Royal Commission will now focus on two main issues: what factors caused or contributed to historical child sex abuse cases in the Church and failures to respond adequately; and what the Church has done or plans to do to address this by way of changes to structures, policies and culture, the discernment of priestly and religious vocations, formation and supervision of those engaged in ministry, and so on.
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