AUSTRALIA
Warwick Daily News
December 22, 2017
By Marian Faa
TWO LOCAL priests reflected with sadness on the history of child sexual abuse within Catholic institutions after the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse presented its final report to the Governor General on Friday, December 15.
After 54 years working as a Catholic priest in the Darling Downs and beyond, Fr Terry Hickling said the thought of abuse within the Church shocked and disappointed him.
“I am very, very sad that these things have occurred and that priests religious and people involved in our Church have been involved in pedophilia,” Fr Hickling said.
“It saddens me and turns my stomach upside down.”
Catholic institutions were vastly over-represented in reports of abuse taken from more than 8,000 survivors over the five years the Commission was conducted.
Nearly 65 per cent of victims identified as male, and most perpetrators of institutional child sexual abuse were teachers and persons in religious ministry.
The final report included 189 new recommendations, two of which have caused controversy within the Catholic Church.
They included introducing voluntary celibacy for priests and requiring priests to report matters relating child abuse disclosed in confession.
Parish priest Franco Filipetto the Church had committed itself to working with other authorities to implement the recommendations of the royal commission but it was only those two recommendations that had become particularly problematic.
“In my opinion these two recommendations cannot be resolved by the church at a national level,” Fr Filipetto said.
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