Australia’s Catholic bishops are ready to step aside and let a special committee composed mainly of lay people, including some from outside the Church, handle sex abuse issues, according to the head of the national organisation for religious orders.
“A committee is being formed — I don’t know all the details about it — but there is going to be a process where there are a number of people, a larger number of people, who are not religious or bishops, who are involved in taking the process forward,” said Sister Annette Cunliffe, RSC.
“They are the experts. The bishops and archbishops and ourselves are not as skillful and perhaps we’re too close to the problem,”
Sister Annette is president of Catholic Religious Australia, which represents the leaders of 180 religious orders and congregations. She was speaking in an ABC television interview.
Her organisation earlier joined the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference in welcoming Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s establishment of a royal commission to investigate child abuse in Australia.
Sister Annette described recent public statements by the Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, as too defensive and said a new way in dealing with abuse claims was needed to move forward.
“I think I hope that we are looking at greater openness and less defensiveness, so that we can open this crime to the light of day to what God would want of truth and honesty,” she said.
Sister Annette said it was time for a new era in the Catholic Church where families no longer felt betrayed, and those doing good work for the poor and disadvantaged could hold their heads up high again.
“Hopefully [this will be] the beginning of a new era of openness and of collaboration within the whole Church to ensure that as far as possible, this does not happen again.”
Sources:
Image: ABC
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