Just last week the coalition was being praised for agreeing to cover travel costs for survivors heading to the apology in Wellington, after RNZ revealed in July many had to cover their own costs to see the Royal Commission of Inquiry report tabled in Parliament.

But only 180 people would be able to witness it in person in Parliament on November 12 and just over 1500 would be able to watch it on screen at official events in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. Cotinue reading

Now an initiative is being launched, with the support of Cardinal Reinhard Marx, Archbishop of Munich and Freising, taking a fresh pastoral approach to the welfare of survivors

"You took away my faith";
"The Church cheated me out of my relationship with God";
"When I needed the Church, it was not there for me!"

Time and again, we hear these cries from the victims of sexual abuse.

They point to the pastoral and spiritual failure at the heart of this crisis.

Many of the survivors of abuse are members of the People of God; their suffering is a deep wound in the Body of Christ. Saying "sorry" is not enough.

There must be a fundamental change.

It is now time for the Church to walk together alongside victims, to listen to them and to learn from them, and to serve and support them in their search for healing, wherever that might take them.

Anyone listening to survivors will often hear how badly sexual violence by a priest or other church figure can damage their relationship with God, or destroy it completely, and how they have felt completely abandoned by the Church when they have tried to understand and deal with the spiritual consequences of the abuse they have suffered.

Despite all the public and private apologies, the compensation paid to victims, the implementation of prevention and training programmes, the creation of safeguarding structures, and the commissioning of scientific studies into the root causes of abuse, it is clear that the Church is still failing survivors at this fundamental, spiritual level.

At present - when it does not avoid offering support altogether - the Church tends to ­delegate dealing with the effects of abuse to psychiatrists and canon lawyers, to internal Church specialists or external professional experts.

Caring for the victims of abuse has become the responsibility of a small and increasingly specialised group of people, who operate largely on the periphery of Church activities.

The pastoral care of the wounded and abandoned is often outsourced.

All this and much more is absolutely necessary - this professional and clinical work must be sustained, particularly the support of victims through counselling and psychotherapy.

But we can no longer keep abuse in the Church at a clinical distance.

As the Archbishop of Brisbane, Mark Coleridge, said during the abuse summit at the Vatican last year, the Church needs a "Copernican revolution" in how it deals with the survivors of abuse.

"Those who have been abused do not revolve around the Church," he said, "but the Church [revolves] around them."

The Church must face up to abuse and its effects not at its peripheries but where it hurts, at its heart.

It is there, in the pastoral and spiritual arena, where it claims the greatest competence, that it has failed the most. It is time the Church began to respond to the ­spiritual wounds caused by abuse in the ­spiritual setting where the abuse occurred.

The pastoral care of those who are suffering is at the heart of the Church's mission.

Its obligation to offer spiritual help to victims does not become obsolete because the suffering took place within the Church, or because of its failures in the past to deal with abusive priests or to listen to the voices of survivors.

Whenever victims of abuse seek spiritual support and guidance, the Church must not turn its back.

It must act with humility and sensitivity.

There has often been rejection, intrusive questioning, accusations, obfuscations and delays in the past.

For understandable reasons, many survivors have no interest in seeking therapeutic or spiritual help from the institution that has abused them.

When victims do seek to engage with the Church, they must be met with appreciation and respect, and regarded as equals.

Two fundamental principles should underpin the Church's approach. Continue reading

• Peter Beer and Hans Zollner.

Abuse survivor Marie Collins told the Irish Times that the commission has made good progress in some areas, but in others, progress has been "very slow".

"My expectation was that the work would be done more quickly," she said.

Her fellow commission members are "really good and have the right intentions".

She does not believe the slow pace is "intentional hindrance".

At the Vatican "they simply do things in a very different way to the secular world. They've been doing things that way for so long they don't see it as slow. I find it frustrating".

Ms Collins also said some in the Vatican "find it a little difficult to work with lay people, women in particular".

"There's been no overt stumbling block or anything put in our way.

"It's just my own personal feeling, my own lack of trust, my own cynicism because of my history."

In the article, she expressed a fear that a future pope may not be as focussed as Pope Francis is on this area.

"My fear is that if we had a change, would the same impetus be there? Every pope has different priorities."

She said she knows that survivor groups are wary of the commission.

"I received a lot of criticism for agreeing to be part of it."

Ms Collins said the "biggest stress of all [of being on the commission] is other survivors being in contact, because I cannot do anything for them".

"Emotionally that's very, very difficult."

But she replies to everyone.

The commission has agreed on an annual Day of Prayer for Survivors of Abuse.

Sources

• Irish Times
• Image: Sydney Morning Herald

Justice Peter McClellan said some Australian institutions where children were abused either have no money or no longer exist.

He chairs the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Justice McClellan said the commission would publish a paper in January, 2015, with proposals on compensation.

It will publish final proposals in mid-2015.

He said one of the elements in an effective response to victims "is a lump sum payment, which marks the abuse and recognises the failure of the institution to keep the person safe as a child".

He said because some institutions had ceased to exist and others had no money, some abuse survivors have no access to compensation.

Justice McClellan said this fell short of the commission's brief of ensuring justice for all victims.

The Catholic and Anglican churches in Australia have been pushing for a government-run scheme to which they would contribute.

Survivor groups such as Care Leavers Australia Network want an interim scheme immediately as some of its members are very old.

The Australian Lawyers Alliance has argued the government should not take charge of the scheme as some homes were government-run and there would be a vested interest to keep payments low.

The alliance wants an independent panel to run the scheme.

Justice McClellan said it was fundamentally important abuse survivors received a meaningful apology and had access to counselling or psychiatric care.

"The answer can only be found in a secure source of funds.

"By some means, funding must be found which ensures that professionals are available to keep people alive and otherwise provide them with the capacity to function effectively," he said.

Sources

• The West Australian
• Image: ABC

On July 7, at his residence at the Domus Sanctae Marthae, the Pope met three women and three men and he asked for forgiveness.

Two of the victims came from Ireland, two were from Great Britain and two were from Germany.

They stayed at the same guesthouse the Pope lives at and attended an early morning Mass.

The Pope met each one privately for a total of more than three hours.

During his homily, Pope Francis praised the survivors' courage in speaking out about their abuse.

He said telling the truth was "was a service of love, since for us it shed light on a terrible darkness in the life of the Church".

He said child sex abuse by clergy is "more than despicable actions".

"It is like a sacrilegious cult, because these boys and girls had been entrusted to the priestly charism in order to be brought to God. And those people sacrificed them to the idol of concupiscence," the Pope said.

He asked for forgiveness "for the sins of omission on the part of the Church leaders who did not respond adequately to reports of abuse".

"Today, the heart of the Church looks into the eyes of Jesus in these boys and girls and wants to weep; she asks for the grace to weep before the execrable acts of abuse which have left lifelong scars," the Pope said.

He also expressed his " love and sorrow" for families who had also suffered from the suicide of a victim.

The Pope also said bishops would be held accountable for protecting minors, but he did not spell out how.

A Vatican spokesman said the survivors were visibly moved by experience and had "felt listened to".

He rejected claims from some groups that the encounter was a publicity stunt.

Irish survivor Marie Kane said after meeting the Pope that she believed he spoke from the heart.

But she warned the Catholic Church would "disappear" if it did not change.

Pope Benedict XVI met clergy sex abuse survivors in several countries.

Sources

• National Catholic Reporter
• The Tablet (includes full text of Pope Francis' address)
• Catholic News Agency
• Religion News Service
• Image: bubu.ca