The Catholic Church in Australia is making headlines once again following a report published on Wednesday by the Center for Global Research at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. The study examined child sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church worldwide and found that compared to the Catholic Church in other countries, Australia has fallen short on protecting children in its care from abuse. Australia is the focus of this latest study which looks at the history of child sexual abuse across the global Church in not only parishes, but also orphanages and boarding schools run by the Church.
This report comes just a month after a study into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse by Australia’s Royal Commission made a number of recommendations, one of which was that priests who failed to report suspected child abuse cases should be punishable by law. If implemented it would mean that priests would be forced to break the “Seal of Confession” and risk excommunication from the church if they learned of child sexual abuse during confession. Some Australian priests responded by saying that they would rather go to prison than break the Seal of Confession.
In June of this year, Cardinal George Pell, Australia’s most senior Catholic figure and the 3rd highest ranking figure in the Roman Catholic Church, was charged with “multiple sexual offenses” by police. When Cardinal Pell was arrested, Victoria’s deputy police commissioner Shane Patton said that Cardinal Pell was “facing multiple charges” from “multiple complainants” and he said the charges were “historical sexual assault offenses”.
This latest study has come at a time where Jesuit priest Hans Zollner, a founding member of Pope Francis’ Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, has been quoted as saying Australians “have lost trust completely” in the (Catholic) Church. Speaking along the same lines as the study, Zollner said that countries outside of Europe and North America had yet to properly tackle the issue of child sexual abuse within the church.
What now for the Church, whose seemingly unending child abuse scandals has sent shockwaves throughout the world? Dr Wilkinson, a consultant on the Royal Commission Into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, said, “To regain trust, not only within the Catholic community, but trust in the church within the nation, the church has to undertake a metanoia — that’s a complete transformation, a change of heart and culture.”
Louise Carter
