Archbishop says scale of sex abuse can't be denied

Tag: australia

The Archbishop of Canberra and Goulburn, Mark Coleridge, has called on Catholic leaders to do everything possible to stop sexual abuse within the Church.

Archbishop Coleridge says he accepts there is a cultural problem within the Church that has led to the abuse, and an institutional pride that has prevented many from speaking out.

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The Archbishop will raise the issue in his pastoral address to the community this week.

He has told Radio National that although the level of abuse in the Church is small, every incident is appalling.

He says the situation is made worse because the abuse breaches the trust held in the clergy.

"No one now can deny the scale of the problem and the urgent task," he said.

"In the case of clerical abuse of the young, we are dealing with crime. And the Church has struggled to find the point of convergence between sin and forgiveness on the one hand, and crime and punishment on the other.

"True sin must be forgiven, but so too must crime be punished.

"What's clear is there will be no quick fix to this problem, the roots of which go deep and wide, we're in for the long haul.

"On that journey, there's a need for cool heads and compassionate hearts, always with our eye fixed primarily on the victims we haven't seen and the voices we haven't heard."

The call comes after the Archbishop of Adelaide, Philip Wilson, came under increasing pressure this week to explain what he knew about clerical sexual abuse when he was an office-holder in the NSW diocese of Maitland-Newcastle in the late 1970s and 1980s.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/20...ion=justin