Cases ‘kept to a few insiders’

The CEO of the Truth, Justice and Healing Council, Francis Sullivan, says the “glaring revelations” from Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, showing how far decisions on responding to cases were limited to clergy, highlight the need to involve the wider Catholic community, writes Mark Brolly. Mr Sullivan, in his  blog on the council’s website, wrote that “a concerted process of dialogue and discernment is required to begin now, not later”, with church leaders needing to provide opportunities for local diocesan gatherings where people could know that they are being heard and understood.

“There is considerable widespread disenchantment and deep sadness within the faithful,” Mr Sullivan wrote on 23 March. “The extent of the abuse scandal has rocked the confidence and trust of ordinary Catholics. One of the glaring revelations in almost all the case studies involving the Church was that the decisions and considerations on how to deal with child abuse cases were kept to a limited few insiders, most often clerics only.”

• ROME: A papal child protection commission vowed to press ahead with its work while pledging its support for anti-abuse campaigner Marie Collins who resigned from the body over the slow pace of reforms. The Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors pledged to “find new ways” to ensure people who had been abused would help shape its work.