QUEENSLAND (AUSTRALIA)
Newburgh Gazette

December 19, 2017

By Dwayne Harmon

A Catholic priest in Queensland has told his congregation the church is a flawed institution, and Australian archbishops must fight for change to stop sexual abuse.

Of survivors who reported abuse in religious institutions, more than 60% cited the Catholic church, which demonstrated “catastrophic failures of leadership”, particularly before the 1990s, the report said.

Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart, the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference president, said the bishops would take the royal commission’s recommendations seriously and present them to the Holy See.

It said priests should report abuse confided to them, even in the secret context of the confessional.

“I revere the law of the land and I trust it but this is a sacred, spiritual charge before God which I must honor and I have to respect and try to do what I can do with both”, Hart said.

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