Washington D.C., Aug 31, 2018 / 16:00 pm
Australian bishops have accepted the vast majority of recommendations made after a five-year investigation into sexual abuse in the country.
In an Aug. 31 response to the Australian Royal Commission's report on sex abuse, the Australian bishops' conference considered hundreds of specific recommendations made by the report.
While welcoming the substance of the report, which was published in December 2017, the Australian bishops' defended the sacramental seal, which the report said should be violated if a priest came to know of an allegation of abuse through confession.
"We are committed to the safeguarding of children and vulnerable people while maintaining the seal. We do not see safeguarding and the seal as mutually exclusive," wrote Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Brisbane and Sister Monica Cavanagh, president of Catholic Religious Australia, in a co-authored preamble to the 57-page response.
"Bishops and religious leaders have accepted or accepted in principle or supported 98 percent of the Royal Commission's recommendations. The one recommendation we cannot accept … refers to the seal of the Sacrament of Penance. This is because it is contrary to our faith and inimical to religious liberty," Coleridge and Cavanagh explained.