AUSTRALIA
Sunday Herald Sun
Ashley Argoon, Sunday Herald Sun
August 26, 2017
PROMINENT priests say they would urge paedophiles to go to police if they admitted to crimes in confession.
Well known men of the cloth say they would refuse absolution, with the only penance for a person who committed such a serious offence to be the “full force of the law”.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse recommended priests be charged for not reporting confessions of paedophiles. Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart has said the confessional seal should remain.
But Fr Brendan Reed from Our Lady of Good Counsel and All Hallows Parish said those who admit to those crimes in confession should expect one result.
“The public expect, and the church expects, that it is such a serious sin the penance has to be no less than handing themselves in,” he said.
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