Church will not report abuse heard in confessions

SYDNEY — Catholic leaders in Australia on Friday rejected a government push to force priests to report accusations of child sexual abuse heard during confession, saying it would violate a sacred rite, infringe on religious freedom and ultimately do little to protect children.

The rebuke came as the local Roman Catholic Church issued a lengthy response to a five-year government inquiry uncovering what officials called a “national tragedy” of widespread sexual abuse of children spanning decades.

The investigation, perhaps the most far-reaching inquiry of its kind undertaken by any country, examined abuse in religious institutions, schools and other establishments, finding that many of the cases of suspected abuse involved Catholic priests and religious brothers.

Church officials sought to strike a largely conciliatory tone in their response, acknowledging the gravity of the church’s “colossal failures” to protect children and embracing the vast majority of the recommendations coming out of the inquiry. Archbishop Mark Coleridge, president of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, said Friday that the church’s leadership had made a pledge: “Never again.”

Yet the church rejected the proposal to hold priests legally culpable for failing to tell authorities of acts of suspected abuse they hear during confession. Laws that make a failure to report a criminal offense have already been introduced in some parts of the country.

“We believe the legislation abolishing priest privilege is based in fact on a lack of understanding of what actually happens in confession and tends to live in a purely hypothetical world,” Coleridge said at a news conference Friday.

“The bishops and leaders have the utmost respect for the law,” he added. “But we believe this proposed law is ill-conceived and impractical. It won’t make children safer and it will most likely undermine religious freedom.”

The response comes at a moment of extraordinary turmoil for the global church over its handling of widespread child sexual abuse reaching from the parish level to the highest tiers of the Catholic hierarchy.

The crisis flared last weekend when a former top Vatican diplomat urged Pope Francis to resign, accusing him of joining other leading officials in covering up abuse. It also follows a searing grand jury report in Pennsylvania that found more than 1,000 identifiable victims of sexual abuse over several decades at local dioceses. That report was the broadest government examination in the United States into child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.

Australians have been alarmed by revelations of sexual abuse in recent years, including a scandal in Ballarat, the hometown of Cardinal George Pell, one of the highest-ranking Catholic prelates to face trial for charges of historic sexual offenses. In that town, authorities said, a police officer investigating a pedophile ring at local Catholic schools found that as many as 30 abuse victims had committed suicide.

The commission issued 189 recommendations, including creating a National Office for Child Safety and calling on Australia’s Catholic leaders to press the Vatican to end mandatory celibacy for priests.

In its response Friday, the Australian Bishops Conference and Catholic Religious Australia issued a 57-page report in which church leaders expressed “profound sorrow” over the abuse by priests and others and the church’s failure to confront the problem.

“Until trust is rebuilt, all the apologies in the world will miss the mark,” Coleridge said, adding that the church was taking significant steps toward reform.