AUSTRALIA
Cairns Post
Rebekah Ison, Australian Associated Press
February 9, 2017
Removing the confidentiality of the Catholic confessional box could stop paedophiles ever admitting to their crimes, a priest says.
Catholic Social Services Australia Chief Executive Father Frank Brennan said no one has ever confessed child sex abuse to him but he had been contacted by a woman whose father repeatedly talked of his crimes in the confessional and was forgiven.
He told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse he thought priests dishing out such “cheap grace” was appalling.
But if confessional confidentiality was taken away, an abuser would know he was in the same position as if he told someone on the street, “I’m a pedophile”.
“I ask myself if you take away the seal of the confessional, is it any more likely that anyone will come to confession and confess pedophilia?,” he said on Thursday.
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