AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald
Joanne McCarthy
4 Mar 2017
A FORMER trainee Catholic priest who gave evidence at the child abuse royal commission has slammed Pope Francis as “all words and no action” after the sudden resignation of the only abuse survivor on a Vatican commission for child protection.
Lawyer and former trainee priest Kieran Tapsell said he did not accept commentary that the Pope was “somehow prevented by an intransigent Curia” from acting quickly and decisively to change church responses to child sex crimes, after the resignation of Irish abuse survivor Marie Collins.
Mr Tapsell argued strongly at the royal commission that the church would not change until the Pope changed canon law and removed the secrecy provisions that protected church offenders, and the church from scrutiny about how it dealt with them.
“Pope Francis is an absolute monarch. He can change canon law imposing secrecy over all information obtained by the church on child sexual abuse cases with the stroke of a pen,” Mr Tapsell said.
“If bishops don’t do what he says, he can sack them. As Justice Peter McClellan told the royal commission, if there is to be any real change to the church in Australia, ultimately it has to come from Rome.”
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