The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has called for monumental reform of the Catholic Church in the wake of a five-year investigation which uncovered 140 victims in the Ballarat Diocese alone.
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A section dedicated to the Catholic Church among the commission’s 189 recommendations urged the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference to request the Holy See to amend several elements of Canon Law to better protect children within the church, including articulating all instances of sexual abuse as canonical crime.
The commission also recommended the bishop of each diocese ensure parish priests are not responsible for hiring teachers and principals throughout Catholic schools. Sexual abuse survivor Phil Nagle said the recommendations would provide a “true test of the Catholic Church’s colours”.
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“The Catholic Church has shown in the past they go into denial and they want to go into their old fashioned ways and that’s why they’ve had these horrendous problems and they will continue to have them until they accept these recommendations,” Mr Nagle said. “If they don’t follow through with this then everything they’ve said is just hollow.”
Among the 189 recommendations is a call to abandon compulsory celibacy among the clergy and to force religious figures to report confessional information regarding sexual abuse to the police.
The commission also called for the destruction of documents relating to canonical criminal cases in matters of morals, where the accused cleric has died or 10 years have elapsed to be abolished.
In a statement Ballarat Diocese Bishop Paul Bird said “we must consider carefully the conclusions in the commission’s final report, to see what further lessons we should learn in regard to our response to those who have suffered abuse and the steps we should take to keep children safe today and in the years ahead”.
A statement from Catholic Religious Australia said the Truth, Justice and Healing Council would provide a thorough assessment of the commission’s recommendations by early 2018.
However Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart has already ruled out changes to confessional practice, saying it “is a sacred spiritual charge before God which I must honour”.
Ballarat Vicar-general Justin Driscoll said the commission’s report “acknowledges that over 20 years there has been lot that’s been done and we’re not the organisation we were but there’s a lot more that needs to be done”.
He also praised the commission’s calls for a greater volume of women in the governance of the church.
Read the full list of recommendations here.
