Australian abuse report calls for end to secrecy of confession

Leaders of the Catholic church in Australia have dismissed calls from a landmark inquiry into child sexual abuse that the Vatican should make celibacy for priests voluntary and end the secrecy of confession.

After five years, Australia’s royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse delivered its 21-volume report to government containing 400 recommendations – 189 of them new – to governments and organisations about how to prevent children being harmed on such a scale again.

Among the recommendations, the report said the government should introduce a law forcing religious leaders to report child abuse, including Catholic priests told of abuse in the confessional.

One the country’s top catholics, Archbishop Denis Hart of Melbourne, said such a law would undermine a central tenet of Catholicism, the sacredness of the confessional, and warned that any priest breaking the seal of confession would be excommunicated.

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The investigation found “multiple and persistent failings of institutions to keep children safe, the cultures of secrecy and cover-up, and the devastating affects child sexual abuse can have on an individual’s life”, the commission said in a statement.

The report detailed tens of thousands of child victims, saying their abusers were “not a case of a few rotten apples”.

“We will never know the true number,” it read.

The inquiry spanned religious, government, educational and professional organisations but heard many accounts alleging abuse cover-ups in the Australian Catholic Church, including allegations of moving priests suspected of abuse between parishes to avoid detection.

‘Catastrophic failures’

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

The commission found that while celibacy for clergy was not a direct cause of abuse, it elevated the risk when compulsorily celibate male clergy or religious figures had privileged access to children.

It called for the Catholic Church to make celibacy voluntary for clergy and said clergy told of child abuse in the confessional should be required by law to report it.

“I would feel terribly conflicted, and I would try even harder to get that person outside confessional, but I cannot break the seal,” the Archbishop told reporters.

“The penalty for any priest breaking the seal is excommunication, being cast out of the church, so it’s a real, serious, spiritual matter, and I want to observe the law of the land . . . but as part of my identity as a priest, I have to observe the seal of the confession.”

A similar recommendation was made during Ireland’s 2009 child abuse inquiry, leading to a mandatory reporting law in 2015. Some US states have similar requirements.

The Australian report also called for a National Office for Child Safety and national child safety standards, child abuse reporting and record keeping, which would cover all institutions engaged in child-related work.

Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull said the inquiry had “exposed a national tragedy” and that the government would consider the recommendations and respond in full next year.

Archbishop Anthony Fisher of Sydney said in a statement he was "appalled by the sinful and criminal activity of some clergy, religious and lay church-workers (and) ashamed of the failure to respond by some church leaders".

The inquiry heard previously that the Australian Catholic Church paid 276 million Australian dollars (€179.7 million) in compensation to thousands of child abuse victims since 1980. –Reuters/Guardian