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A landmark report into safeguarding has condemned a culture of secrecy and cover-up in the Scottish Catholic Church.
The 99-page McLellan Commission Report, published this week, described abuse as “the greatest challenge facing the whole Catholic Church in Scotland”.
The commission was led by Dr Andrew McLellan, a former Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and former Chief Inspector of Prisons for Scotland.
He was invited to chair the commission by the Catholic bishops’ conference in Scotland
The commission’s report set out the findings of a critical review of safeguarding policy and made eight key recommendations.
It concluded that support for survivors of abuse must be the Church’s absolute priority, and said that it had not been so in the past.
It condemned a culture of secrecy and cover-up that allowed abuse to remain hidden, and said that in seeking to avoid scandal, the Church had caused “scandal in a theological sense” to victims and to the wider Catholic population.
“There is lost ground to be made up,” it said, adding that Mass attendance had declined because of Scottish Catholics’ shame about the Church’s response to abuse.
It acknowledged the hard work of many within the Church to improve safeguarding.
The report noted the promises of change, particularly following the resignation of Cardinal Keith O’Brien after allegations of sexual misconduct were made against him by former seminarians.
But the commission said that the Church in Scotland “has not made significant structural changes” in terms of embedding safeguarding in ministry and theology.
It also criticised the “complications of church administration” that hampered the Church’s efforts to deal consistently with abuse allegations, in particular the different authority structures that separated the bishops and religious congregations.
As the commission’s report was delivered, Archbishop Philip Tartaglia offered a “profound” apology to victims of “criminal and sinful” abuse within the Catholic Church in Scotland.
The archbishop, who is the president of the Bishops’ Conference for Scotland, also said the Church is “pained and shamed” by incidents of abuse that have taken place within it.
Bishop Joseph Toal of Motherwell, the bishop responsible for safeguarding, said the Church “fully accepted” the report’s recommendations.
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