The second week of the Royal Commission's final public hearing into the Catholic Church started this week. The focus of the Commission's work this week has included an examination of the training and formation of priests, professional support of priests, Catholic social services and education and professional standards and survivor services.
Read TJHC hearing room updates and other material here
Royal Commission releases full report on child sexual abuse in Catholic Church
The Royal Commission has released its full report on child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church. This is the report from which data which was released at the start of Case Study 50 last week was drawn.
The report, and its associated explanatory note, provides much greater detail on information about abuse in the church including weighted and unweighted numbers of claims and alleged offenders and redress payments made by dioceses and orders.
We are now in the second week of the three that will make up the final hearing of the Catholic Church in this Royal Commission. Unlike all the other case studies the Church has been involved with, this hearing is delving into the way the Church, as a whole, dealt with the abuse scandal.
As each topic is explored, be it clericalism, celibacy, the seal of confession or screening and supervision of seminarians, a range of views and positions are on display. There is no doubt that the Catholic Church is a complex and multifaceted organisation.
Pope Francis asks for forgiveness in preface to new clerical child sexual abuse book
Pope Francis has writen the preface to a new book by a survivor of clerical sexual abuse asking for forgiveness for what he calls an "absolute monstrosity" in the Church's history.
"It is difficult for a victim of pedophilia to speak out about what they have endured and to describe the trauma that still persists many years later," Pope Francis writes in "Father, I Forgive You" by Daniel Pittet, a Swiss man who was repeatedly raped by a Capuchin friar as a child.
Frank Brennan writes about the Catholic wrap-up at the Royal Commission
Fr Frank Brennan writes in Eureka Street this week about his appearance before the Royal Commission and the importance of the Church learning from the Commission's examination.
Brennan said to the Commission: 'Though most of you are not members of the Catholic Church, nor pride yourselves as theologians, you have been the de facto confessors of the nation on this particular issue now for four years. You have far more experience pastorally on these things than even all these learned professors and bishops I am surrounded by will ever have.'
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