AUSTRALIA
Catholic Leader
BRISBANE Archbishop Mark Coleridge described the Church as “a law unto ourselves”, and said Pope Francis and the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse were catalysts for cultural change.
Archbishop Coleridge was a panellist on the third day of the Royal Commission hearing in Sydney discussing Catholic Church structural and cultural issues, including accountability and transparency.
Archbishop Coleridge said the Church must put a “culture of concealment” behind it.
“The Catholic Church in Australia has at times looked the other way, been a law unto itself, and seen that it does things its own way,” he said.
Commissioner Robert Fitzgerald asked whether it was too harsh to say the Church in Australia still had not embraced the notion of transparency as good practice.
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