Australian inquiry recommends celibacy demand be lifted on clergy
Priests could be jailed for failing to report confessions over child abuse
An Australian inquiry into child abuse has recommended the Catholic Church lift its demand of celibacy from clergy – and that priests be prosecuted for failing to report evidence of paedophilia heard in the confessional.
Australia’s longest-running royal commission delivered its final 17-volume report and 189 recommendations following a wide-ranging investigation.
The country’s highest form of inquiry has been investigating since 2012 how the Catholic Church and other institutions responded to sexual abuse of children in Australia over 90 years.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse report heard the testimonies of more than 8,000 survivors of child sex abuse.
Of those who were abused in religious institutions, 62 per cent were Catholics.
“We have concluded that there were catastrophic failures of leadership of Catholic Church authorities over many decades,” the report said.
Recommendations include the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference requesting the Vatican consider introducing voluntary celibacy for clergy.
The report said the bishops’ body should also request clarity on whether information received in the confessional that a child has been sexually abused is covered by the seal of secrecy and whether absolution of a perpetrator should be withdrawn until the perpetrator confesses to police.
Catholic clerics who testified to the royal commission gave varying opinions about what, if anything, a priest could divulge on what was said in a confessional about child abuse.
The commission’s recommendations include making failure to report child sexual abuse a criminal offence. Clerics would not be exempt from being charged.
The law should exclude any existing excuse or privilege relating to a religious confessional, the report said.
Pope Francis’s former finance minister Cardinal George Pell testified via a video link from the Vatican last year about his time as a priest and bishop in Australia. Pell this year became the most senior Catholic official to face sex offence charges.
Through his lawyers, Pell has vowed to fight the charges of sexual assault.
The commission found the church’s responses to complaints and concerns about clerics in Australia were “remarkably and disturbingly similar”.
The president of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, Archbishop Denis Hart, said many of the commission’s recommendations “would have significant impact on the way the Catholic Church and others operate in Australia”.
He said the Vatican was already giving “serious consideration” to questions raised by the commission about the extent of the seal of the confession and whether child molesters who did not confess to police could be absolved.
“I cannot break the seal,” Archbishop Hart said. “The penalty for any priest breaking the seal is excommunication, being passed out of the church. I revere the law of the land and I trust it, but this is a sacred, spiritual charge before God, which I must honour and I have to try and do what I can do with both.”
Mr Hart said the Australian bishops would put the celibacy recommendations to the Vatican, but added: “I believe that there are real values in celibacy.”
The commission found that celibacy was not a direct cause of child sexual abuse, but was a contributing factor, especially when combined with other risk factors.
Prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, who is a Catholic, recommended all Australians read the report.