AUSTRALIA
CNN
December 15, 2017
By Ben Westcott and Lucie Morris-Marr
(CNN)Senior leaders in Australia’s Catholic church have rejected calls by a wide-reaching investigation into child abuse to end mandatory celibacy for priests and break the secrecy of confession.
The Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which concluded Thursday after five years of work, delivered a total of 189 new recommendations to address what it described as a “serious failure” by Australia’s institutions to protect its most vulnerable citizens.
The landmark report estimates tens of thousands of children have been abused in Australian institutions, in what the commission described as a “national tragedy.”
“We now know that countless thousands of children have been sexually abused in many institutions in Australia. In many institutions, multiple abusers have sexually abused children,” the report said.
“We must accept that institutional child sexual abuse has been occurring for generations.”
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