AUSTRALIA
9 News
AAP
Brisbane Archbishop Mark Coleridge does not feel shackled by celibacy, nor does he view it as one of the causes of widespread child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.
Archbishop Coleridge says he made a free decision to choose to live a celibate life when he was ordained in his 20s.
“I’ve never had the sense of being shackled, of having a burden imposed upon me by an oppressive church,” he told the child abuse royal commission on Wednesday.
The inquiry into the complex reasons behind child abuse in the Catholic Church has heard research shows less than 50 per cent of priests at any given time are actually practising celibacy.
Archbishop Coleridge said he wasn’t naive enough to think most clergy lived a strictly celibate life.
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