Church rejects inquiry recommendation

Pope Francis was at the centre of cover-up claims this week. Photo / AP

The Catholic Church in Australia has rejected a recommendation by a government inquiry that priests be required to report evidence of child sex abuse disclosed in the confessional.

The recommendation that priests be prosecuted for failing to report evidence of paedophilia heard in the confessional was a key finding in December of Australia's Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Australia's longest-running royal commission - which is the country's highest form of inquiry - had been investigating since 2012 how the Catholic Church and other institutions responded to sexual abuse of children in Australia over 90 years.

The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference president Archbishop Mark Coleridge said breaking the seal of the confessional would not make children safer. "Australian priests and the lay faithful are deeply committed to both child safety and the seal of confession, which we hold to be inviolable," he said. "This isn't because we regard ourselves as being above the law, or because we don't think the safety of children is supremely important - we do. But we don't accept that safeguarding and the seal are mutually exclusive."

He also claimed breaking the seal had practical limits, as most confessions were anonymous.

"If I am a confessor and someone comes to me anonymously and confesses abusing a child, without identifying the victim, what am I supposed to do?" he said. "[Tell] the police, 'someone whose name I don't know, who is anonymous, has confessed to abusing a child, the identity of whom I don't [know] either'."

However, Coleridge said the church's "shameful" history of child abuse and cover-ups would never be repeated. "Many bishops failed to listen, failed to believe, and failed to act," he said. "Those failures allowed some abusers to offend again and again, with tragic and sometimes fatal consequences. The bishops and leaders of religious orders pledge today: Never again."

Sister Monica Cavanagh, president of Catholic Religious Australia, said the church accepted 98 per cent of the recommendations, calling the inquiry "an important and necessary period for the Australian community".

"The process is already under way to reform the church's practices to ensure that safeguarding is integral in all that we do as part of our ministry and outreach in the community," she said.

"Making the church a safer place for our children and vulnerable persons is at the heart of our commitment to mission."

Pope Francis was at the centre of cover-up claims this week. He faced accusations that he covered up for an American ex-cardinal accused of sexual misconduct.

Francis declined to confirm or deny claims by the Vatican's retired ambassador to the United States, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, that he knew in 2013 about sexual misconduct allegations against the former archbishop of Washington, Theodore McCarrick, but rehabilitated him anyway. Vigano called on Francis to resign.

Australian state governments are increasing pressure on the church to report child abuse and are legislating to prosecute priests who maintain that revelations of paedophilia made in the confessional cannot be disclosed.

Former Adelaide Archbishop Philip Wilson was sentenced last month to 12 months in home detention after becoming the most senior Catholic cleric ever convicted of covering up children sex abuse.

The seal of the confession was not at issue in his case. Rather, Wilson testified that he did not recall ever hearing allegations against a paedophile priest and therefore could not have acted to protect the boys who were abused.

Catholicism is the largest denomination in majority-Christian Australia.

- AP