AUSTRALIA
news.com.au
THE leader of the Catholic Church in WA has been ordered to appear before the child sex abuse royal commission’s final public hearing, which will lay bare the church’s “confronting and shameful” history of child sexual abuse in Australia.
Perth Catholic Archbishop Timothy Costelloe revealed in a letter to the church’s 100-plus parishes yesterday he had been summoned to give evidence before the commission, which begins a six-week public hearing in Sydney on Monday.
The commission will release Catholic Church data on the extent of abuse claims in Australia as part of its three-week hearing into the church and its past and current handling of abuse.
Archbishop Costelloe told The West Australian yesterday he had not been officially informed what evidence he will be expected to give.
“My evidence will not be related to specific case studies or instances of abuse … but rather to the ways in which the Church at a practical level has sought to respond to this crisis … and also to the deeper and vitally important question of why this terrible abuse happened at all, and to the horrifying extent that it did, within the Catholic Church,” he said.
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