Vatican City, Oct 8, 2017 / 08:17 am
Last week, Church leaders from Australia traveled to Rome to meet with Vatican authorities to discuss the various crises Catholics in the country are currently undergoing, largely tied to a history of clerical sex abuse.
According to an Oct. 7 communique from the Vatican, the leadership of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference traveled to Rome last week to meet with officials from the Vatican's Secretariat of State and other relevant offices of the Holy See "for a wide-ranging discussion concerning the situation of the Catholic Church in Australia at this time."
Topics covered in the discussions included the ongoing investigations of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which recently suggested that the Catholic Church be legally bound to break the seal of Confession when sexual abuse has been disclosed within the Sacrament.
They also recently carried out a third investigation into Cardinal George Pell, Prefect of the Secretariat of the Economy, who is currently facing multiple charges of past sexual abuse in Australia.