The Australian report could generate even more controversy for the Pope because of responses to royal commission recommendations on some of the Catholic Church’s most controversial, but core, beliefs and laws. They include mandatory celibacy, secrecy provisions applying to child sexual abuse allegations and disciplinary proceedings, and breaching the seal of confession for abuse allegations.

The Australian report will be released only days after Pope Francis was criticised while in Ireland for talking rather than acting to change systemic issues allowing the sexual abuse of children in that country over decades, and after a devastating American grand jury report on 300 “predator priests” accused of abusing 1000 children over 70 years.

It will also be made public only days after explosive allegations by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano that the Pope failed to act in 2013 on allegations that American Cardinal Theodore McCarrick abused children. The Pope’s supporters have strongly challenged the accusations and pointed to the conservative archbishop’s long-standing opposition to the Pope.  

Australian Catholic Bishops Conference president Archbishop Mark Coleridge and Sister Monica Cavanagh, the president of Catholic Religious Australia representing 150 religious orders, will release the Australian Catholic Church response to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse during a media conference in Sydney on Friday.

The Australian report was completed after consultation with the Vatican.

The royal commission made 26 specific recommendations for Catholic Church reform, including that Australia’s bishops request the Holy See to amend church law so that the “pontifical secret” not apply to any aspect of the church’s responses to child sexual abuse.

In 2014 Pope Francis rejected similar recommendations from two United Nations committees that condemned the Catholic Church because of the global child sexual abuse scandal.

The royal commission also called on Australia’s bishops to request the Holy See to change canon law to call child sexual abuse crimes rather than sins or moral failings, to stop destroying child sexual abuse documents and to consider introducing voluntary celibacy for clergy.

The royal commission also recommended a national review of the governance and management structures of dioceses and parishes to allow transparency, accountability and the involvement of lay men and women.

In a statement this month Archbishop Coleridge acknowledged Pope Francis’s statement in response to the American grand jury report, in which the Pope called the church’s sexual abuse of children “atrocities” and begged forgiveness “for our own sins and the sins of others”.

Archbishop Coleridge said they were “important words from Pope Francis, but words are not enough”.

“Now is the time for action on many levels,” the archbishop said, after the Pope’s statement was criticised in Australia for failing to outline how the church would change to protect children.

The Pope was also criticised for saying just two sentences after the Australian royal commission final report was released in December, 2017, in which he acknowledged the royal commission’s “accurate efforts”.

Australian critics said the Pope’s recent letters were “just more words” and “hand-wringing”.

Newcastle Herald