AUSTRALIA
The West Australian
Angela Pownall , Sydney
Thursday, February 23, 2017
Perth’s Catholic Archbishop says child sexual abuse took hold in the Church because the institution and its leaders were a “law unto themselves”.
Timothy Costelloe told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that a “catastrophic failure” in leadership led to widespread abuse and the Church’s “scandalously insufficient” response to it.
Giving evidence yesterday, he said bishops had behaved “almost like a little monarch in his own diocese” .
“The Church, in a sense, saw itself largely as … a law unto itself; that it was somehow or other so special, so unique and so important it stood aside from the normal things that would be a part of any other body that works or exists in society,” he said.
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