AUSTRALIA
9 News
AAP
Catholic priests could face serious penalties if they don’t meet the mark set by a new professional standards body which will publicly name non-compliant dioceses and orders.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on Monday heard Catholic Professional Standards Limited would audit the church’s authorities, with a view to holding them to account by publishing reports online.
Brisbane Archbishop Mark Coleridge thinks bishops should consider entering formal arrangements with priests so they could be stood aside or have their faculties removed if they repeatedly flout the new standards.
“These are serious sanctions – to stand a man aside or to remove his faculties – but given the seriousness of what we are discussing, they are measures that I would consider,” he said on Monday.
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