During the meeting, Pope Francis encouraged the pilgrims in their faith journey. He answered questions on topics ranging from education to evangelisation, the environment and caring for our common home.

‘I'm very happy to welcome you here and to see such courageous young people,' said Pope Francis.

When asked what message he wanted to get across to young people, the Holy Father simply said: ‘The main message I want to get across is that the Lord is always by your side—always. Even in the most difficult moments, he is always with us. He never tires of walking with us!'

Read More

On Monday, the CCI informed shareholders and staff of the decision, which will result in the closure of the insurer for new business.

Despite this decision, CCI remains solvent and will honour existing claims, including those related to historic sex abuse cases.

The church leadership has assured victims that the gradual shutdown will not affect their claims. The board of CCI described the process as a voluntary "run-off."

Repercussions for Catholic dioceses

The insurer's demise is expected to have repercussions for Catholic dioceses across Australia. Nonetheless, officials emphasise that existing claims will continue to be funded.

CCI's shareholders, who are Australian dioceses, had considered injecting additional capital into the insurer after providing $170 million previously to cover sex abuse claims.

However, the CCI board stated that it could not secure the necessary capital to sustain its operations and meet regulatory requirements.

Although CCI will remain an authorised insurer under the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority, it will no longer issue new or renewal policies.

The insurer has offered affected policyholders with contracts expiring in the coming weeks a short-term renewal until June 30.

Joan Fitzpatrick, Chair of CCI, reassured stakeholders that the insurer possesses sufficient assets to meet its current commitments.

"The CCI board and management deeply regret that it has been necessary to make this decision and would like to assure all staff, policyholders and suppliers that it has sufficient assets to meet its commitments as they currently stand," Fitzpatrick said.

Historic sex abuse claims

The financial struggles of CCI have been attributed primarily to the large number of historic sex abuse claims. However, the insurer has also faced payouts for climate-related issues affecting its customers.

Timothy Costelloe, President of the Catholic Bishops Conference, and Peter Jones, President of Catholic Religious Australia, have expressed their support for abuse victims and reiterated their commitment to justice and compassion.

The pair acknowledged the need for compensation and pledged to continue working towards healing and justice for the crimes and sins that have occurred within the church.

Sources

The Australian

Life Insurance International

This remains the case, even in cases where a victim disclose sexual abuse to their confessor or an abuser confesses their actions.

"A confessor is prohibited completely from using knowledge acquired from confession to the detriment of the penitent even when any danger of revelation is excluded."

The confessor may encourage a victim to seek help outside the confessional or, when appropriate, to report an instance of abuse to the authorities," the Vatican said.

The Vatican told the Australian Catholic Church leaders that seal of confession "is one of great delicacy and that it is related intimately with a most sacred treasure of the Church's life, that is to say, with the sacraments."

It "provides an opportunity - perhaps the only one - for those who have committed sexual abuse to admit to the fact."

"Were it to become the practice, however, for confessors to denounce those who confessed to child sexual abuse, no such penitent would ever approach the sacrament and a precious opportunity for repentance and reform would be lost."

The comments came in a series of "observations" to the August 2018 response of the Australian Catholic Bishops' Conference and Catholic Religious Australia to the Final Report of the Royal Commission on Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, published in December 2017.

The final report from Australia's Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (2013 to 2017) consisted of 17 volumes and 189 recommendations.

The Commission recommended that the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference request three specific changes for the Vatican to consider:

• introducing voluntary celibacy for clergy
• ending the seal of confession for cases of abuse
• requiring that abusers confess to the police before sacramental absolution can be given.

The Australian bishops' conference responded saying it would comply with 98 percent of the Commission's recommendations, but rejected the call to remove the seal of the confessional.

The Vatican noted many of the Royal Commission's recommendations have already been enacted for the universal Church, including the proper vetting of candidates for episcopal office.

However, it has rejected the Commission's recommendation that priestly celibacy should be voluntary rather than mandatory.

"While the Holy See accepts the good will of the Royal Commission in making the present recommendation, it wishes to emphasize the great value of celibacy and to caution against its reduction to a merely practical consideration..."

"With regard to any assertion of a link between celibacy and sexual abuse, a great deal of evidence demonstrates that no direct cause and effect exists..."

Archbishop Mark Coleridge, the president of the Australia bishops' conference, says the ongoing public conversation about policies, practices and protocols will ensure that children and other people at risk are safe in our communities.

"It's in this spirit that the observations have been published," he says.

Source

• Crux
• Image: Eureka Street

Pope Francis has approved the national ecclesiastical gathering.

The Plenary Council will meet twice - once in central Australia in late 2020 and again on the eastern seaboard in mid-2021.

The Council's aim is to make plans to address challenges the Church faces in contemporary Australian society.

Council delegates will seek deeper discernment, further learning, and dialogue.

A series of listening and dialogue sessions for establishing the Council's agenda begins on 20 May this year.

Pope Francis has endorsed Perth Archbishop Timothy Costelloe's nomination as the Council president.

Costelloe says he is "committed to listening to the Spirit.

"I encourage all Catholics, whether devout or disillusioned, fervent or frustrated, to seize this opportunity to speak what is on their minds and in their minds."

Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Brisbane, who is the chair of the Bishops Commission for the Council, has asked people to "join in prayer as we embark on this journey together as God's people in Australia."

He says the gathering "will be a unique opportunity for people to come together and listen to God in all the ways God speaks to us, and in particular by listening to one another as together we discern what God is asking of us at this time - a time when the Church in Australia is facing significant challenges.

"We sincerely hope the preparation and celebration of the Plenary Council is a time when all parts of the Church listen to and dialogue with one another as we explore together how we might answer the question: ‘What do you think God is asking of us in Australia?'"

The bishops of Australia have launched a website for the Plenary Council to help people better understand how they can participate in the discussion process.

The website can be found at plenarycouncil.catholic.org.au

Decisions made at the Plenary Council will become binding for the Catholic Church in Australia, subject to the Holy See's approval.

Source

• Vatican News
• National Catholic Reporter
• Image: National Catholic Reporter

The Age - a daily newspaper that has been published in Melbourne since 1854 - undertook the six-month investigation.

It found the Church is far wealthier than it asserted to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

The Age says the Australian Catholic Church claimed "grossly undervalued" its property holdings. It says the Church told the Royal Commission increased payments to abuse survivors could require cuts to its social programmes.

The investigation found the Church is the biggest non-government property owner in Victoria and one of the largest property owners in Australia: Church wealth in Victoria alone is over AUD$9 billion.

Other assets the investigation took into account include: Catholic Church Insurance Ltd (established in 1911); a number of Catholic Development Funds (CDF) valued at several billion dollars - with the Melbourne CDF valued at over a billion dollars; investments, including in superannuation and telecommunications; and a funds management portfolio of over $1.4 billion.

The investigation claims the Church's Victoria portfolio alone is estimated to be about $9 billion.

In contrast, the Melbourne Archdiocese told the Royal Commission in 2014 it valued its Melbourne properties at just $109 million.

Asked by the Royal Commission specifically to nominate a value for the assets of the Church and its associated entities, the Melbourne Archdiocese communications director Shane Healy said such information was "not available".

The investigation also found the Royal Commission heard the compensation scheme Archbishop George Pell established 20 years ago provided a maximum of $35,000 to those who had been abused by clergy.

In all, $11.3 million has been paid to 324 survivors of child sexual abuse.

The investigation contrasts the compensation payments to other Church spending. As an example, it found that in 2015, the Melbourne archdiocese paid $39 million - more than three times the total amount it has paid out in compensation to sexual abuse victims - for new premium offices. The offices are located in the heritage-listed Industry House in East Melbourne, near St Patrick's Cathedral.

"These figures confirm what we have known; there is huge inequity between the Catholic Church's wealth and their responses to survivors," says Helen Last, chief executive of the In Good Faith Foundation, which supports abuse survivors.

"The 600 survivors registered for our Foundation's services continue to experience minimal compensation and lack of comprehensive care in relation to their church abuses. They say their needs are the lowest of Church priorities."

Healy argues the Church's meeting the claims of survivors whose complaints of abuse were upheld was "amongst its highest priorities".

He said that since that report the church had paid an extra $17.2 million to survivors.

Fairfax Media, which owns and publishes The Age, published the investigation results across several media channels yesterday.

Source

• The Age
• 7 News
• Bendigo Advertiser
• Sydney Morning Herald
• Image: news.com.au

Gail Furness, the lawyer for the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, delivered a blistering speech outlining its findings to date about Catholic dioceses, religious orders and institutions.

Afterwards, the Sydney Morning Herald editorialised: "Now we know too, that sexual atrocities against children of a horrendous nature and on a horrendous scale have been committed within the Catholic Church in Australia over many decades."

Ms Furness's speech was based on statistics compiled in an accompanying research paper, "Proportion of priests and non‐ordained religious subject to a claim of child sexual abuse 1950‐2010".

The statistics are cold numbers but behind them are horrifying stories of abuse by men (they are nearly all men) and women consecrated to God.

They are deplorable and inexcusable and cry out to the Almighty for redress.

The lives of many innocent children have been ruined.

Over the next month the Commission will build on the figures and case studies to investigate "the policies and procedures of Catholic church authorities" in relation to sexual abuse.

In the light of its findings, it plans to make recommendations on a number of issues of great concern to Catholics, like mandatory celibacy, the sacrament of confession, relations with the Vatican and formation of candidates for the priesthood and religious life.

While all Catholics, and especially their bishops, have to bear the burden of shame for this abominable sexual abuse, the Church still deserves to be treated fairly, on the basis of the facts.

Here are a few key problems with coverage of the Commission's sessions.

1. The Sydney Morning Herald reported that "In the past 35 years there were 1880 alleged perpetrators from more than 1000 Catholic entities". This is not true but the mistake is understandable because of the complexity of the statistics in the Commission's report. The truth is that the allegations made over the 35 years from 1980 to 2015 relate to 1880 alleged perpetrators dating between 1950 and 2010. In other words, the claims stretched over 60 - not 35 - years.
2. The SMH report relates to "priests and non‐ordained religious". In its telling of the story, the "1880 alleged perpetrators" seem to be all priests, religious brothers and a few nuns. But this is false, as a closer reading of the report reveals. Continue reading

• Michael Cook is editor of MercatorNet.

When young Father George Pell moved his things into the presbytery in 1973, that corner of Ballarat was one of the most dangerous places in Australia for children. Already living in the presbytery was Father Gerald Ridsdale, chaplain at the little primary school standing on the other side of the church. He was raping the children. All four members of the staff, all Christian Brothers, were abusing the children in the school. They would not be exposed for twenty years. George Pell, back from his studies in Rome and Oxford, noticed nothing.

Ballarat was his town. His parents owned the Royal Oak. George Sr. was huge, down-to-earth and Protestant. Lil was fierce, gentle and made all the decisions that mattered in her son's life. She was devoted to the Catholic Church. A portrait of old Daniel Mannix, archbishop of Melbourne since 1917, hung in her kitchen. Her son would one day write: "She was a woman of great strength and faith: a faith I suspect that was very Irish, and probably in particular a faith typical of the west of Ireland in its certainties and in its impatience with theological subtleties." The pub was working-class but not rough. George Sr. ran an SP bookmaking operation out of the front bar and hid the books under his children's beds. He enforced the rules. Children brought up in a pub learn to tolerate all sorts and to value rules. Once they were teenagers, young George and his sister Margaret helped out in the bar in the school holidays but their mother was preparing her children for a life that would take them a long way from the Royal Oak.

Though raised Catholic from birth - tribal Catholic in a town where priests, nuns and brothers ruled the Catholic roost - Lil's big, confident boy had a conversion in adolescence that determined the course of his spiritual life and the trajectory of his career. At the age of fourteen he fell under the spell of B.A. Santamaria:

"As a teenager, probably in 1955, I first heard him talk to a packed cathedral hall in Ballarat on the menace of communism. He set out to identify the mighty forces under the swirl of events. He often appealed to history. We felt we too belonged to the forces of good fighting the new faces of evil, as saints and heroes had done for thousands of years. He placed us in a grand tradition of worthy struggle and combat, where we felt we could do our bit. Some of us never completely lost this conviction." Continue reading

Sources

• ABC Religion and Ethics
• Image: news.com.au

The revelation was made in a submission to a state parliamentary hearing on Friday.

"It is shameful and shocking that this abuse, with its dramatic impact on those who were abused and their families, was committed by Catholic priests, religious and church workers," said Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart.

A report by The Australian, however, said instances of abuse had fallen dramatically from the "appalling" numbers of the 1960s and 1970s.

Pope Benedict XVI told Australian bishops last year that their work had been made more difficult by the clerical sex abuse scandal which has rocked the church. The pope exhorted the bishops to "repair the errors of the past with honesty".

The Australian Church said most of the 620 criminal abuse claims it had upheld over the last 16 years related to incidents 30 to 80 years ago, with very few related to abuse that has taken place since 1990.

Archbishop Hart said the church had taken steps to redress the issue, including a program implemented in the 1990s involving an independent investigation, an ongoing program of counselling and support, and compensation.

"This submission shows how the Church of today is committed to facing up to the truth and to not disguising, diminishing or avoiding the actions of those who have betrayed a sacred trust," he said.

"We acknowledge the suffering and trauma endured by children who have been in the Church's care, and the effect on their families. We renew our apology to them," he said in a statement in which he spoke for Church leaders in Victoria.

But victims' supporters say the number of children abused was likely much higher than that confirmed by the church in its own inquiries.

Chrissie Foster, whose two daughters were raped by their parish priest from the mid-1980s, said the church had had decades to address the issue but had only revealed the figure to the Victorian inquiry last week.

"It's only been victims coming out and going to the police that has stopped all of this," she told the ABC.

"The church has never lifted a finger to stop their paedophile priests," added Ms Foster, who said one of her daughters had ultimately taken her own life.

Sources

• The Australian
• DNA - India
• Capital FM News
• Image: ABC News