CNA Staff, Feb 1, 2021 / 06:30 am (CNA).- Australian prosecutors announced on Monday that they were dropping charges against individual journalists accused of breaching a gag order over the trial of Cardinal George Pell.
Prosecutor Lisa De Ferrar… […]
Canberra, Australia, Jan 28, 2021 / 04:15 pm (CNA).- Starting in February, the Catholic Church in Australia will have a national protocol for responding to allegations of sexual abuse, the bishops of Australia announced this week.
Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Brisbane, president of the Australian bishop’s conference, said the new protocol “demands an approach from the Church that is compassionate and just.”
“One of the strengths of the new protocol is that it provides a single national framework, which will ensure a consistent approach to the handling of concerns and allegations,” Coleridge said Jan. 28.
The National Response Protocol lays out principles that Church authorities must adhere to when responding to a child abuse allegation, as well as the concrete procedural steps that must be taken when an allegation is received.
These steps include mandatory reporting of criminal allegations of child abuse against current or former Church personnel to police.
The National Response Protocol will replace two protocols established in 1996, about which the Church had received criticism for their “inconsistent or incomplete application,” Coleridge said.
The existing protocols will continue to be in use until the end of the year, or the conclusion of matters currently being managed, Catholic Weekly reported.
A 2017 Royal Commission report on child sex abuse in the country’s institutions uncovered serious failings in the protection of children from abuse in institutions.
The Australian bishops’ conference responded positively to nearly all the Royal Commission’s recommendations, but has defended the sanctity of the confessional seal.
The new protocol was developed in response to recommendations in the Royal Commission report, and in two years of consultation with abuse survivors. The bishops’ conference of Australia adopted the new protocols at their November 2020 meeting.
The new protocols are based on National Catholic Safeguarding Standards which the Australian church adopted in May 2020.
The protocols also take into account Pope Francis’ motu proprio Vos estis lux mundi, which laid out universal norms on sex abuse reporting and took effect June 1, 2019, days after the adoption of the NCSS.
The norms of Vos estis lux mundi establish that clerics and religious are obliged to report sexual abuse accusations to the local ordinary where the abuse occurred. Every diocese must have a mechanism for reporting abuse. When a suffragan bishop is accused, the metropolitan archbishop is placed in charge of the investigation.
In December 2020, the Catholic bishops of Australia and two other Catholic entities launched Australian Catholic Safeguarding Limited, a company charged with the safeguarding of children against sexual abuse by clergy.
Catholic entities in Australia may— but will not be compelled to— “subscribe” to the ACSL. Those entities that subscribe will be expected to comply with its safeguarding standards, conduct reviews and audits of their abuse prevention systems at least every three years, and provide ACSL with a copy of their reviews, which will be published on the ACSL’s website.
The Church in Australia during July 2018 launched a compensation program for victims of institutional child sexual abuse, which is expected to run until June 30, 2027.
Rome Newsroom, Jan 21, 2021 / 12:00 pm (CNA).- As a self-proclaimed atheist in his early 20s, Private Dillon Beatson said that the only time he spoke of religion was with ridicule. But when his helicopter crashed during a training mission in the Middle… […]
CNA Staff, Jan 20, 2021 / 12:00 pm (CNA).- Investigators examining transfers from the Vatican to Australia have been unable to account for around $1.9 million sent between the two countries, local media reported on Wednesday.
Another $5.4 million in Vatican-linked transfers have been identified as being for legitimate expenses, such as travel, wages, and pension payments, The Australian newspaper said on Jan. 20.
Australian authorities have been investigating suspicious transfers from the Vatican to Australia for several months.
Australia’s financial crime watchdog acknowledged earlier in January that it had vastly overestimated the sum of what it said had been 47,000 Vatican transfers.
The Australian newspaper said on Jan. 13 that the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC), a government agency, attributed the miscalculation to a “computer coding error.”
After a “detailed review” of its initial finding, AUSTRAC informed Australia’s Senate that its initial finding of $1.8 billion was incorrect, and the real figure amounted to $7.4 million, sent in 362 transfers between 2014 and 2020.
Investigators at AUSTRAC, the Bank of Italy, and the Institute for Religious Works (IOR) — also called the “Vatican bank” — are conducting a joint investigation into the $7.4 million.
After finding that $5.4 million came from legitimate expenses, nearly $2 million still remains to be tracked.
The Australian reported last week that AUSTRAC had also concluded that over the past six years there were 237 transfers totaling $20.6 million in the other direction: from Australia to the Vatican.
The newspaper said that AUSTRAC was, however, continuing to investigate suspicious transfers from the Vatican to Australia.
It added that Australian Federal Police and the Vatican’s financial intelligence unit were investigating four transfers to Australia from the Vatican.
It said that two of the transfers were connected to Cardinal Angelo Becciu. A total of $1.5 million was reportedly sent to a company in Melbourne between 2017 and 2018.
Reports of suspicious money transfers from the Vatican to Australia date back to October when Italian media reported that an alleged transfer was part of a dossier being compiled by Vatican investigators and prosecutors against Becciu.
Becciu resigned from his curial position and gave up his rights as a cardinal on Sept. 24, reportedly in connection with multiple financial scandals dating back to his time as the second-ranking official at the Vatican’s Secretariat of State.
He has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing or any attempt to influence the trial of Cardinal George Pell, the former prefect of the Vatican Secretariat for the Economy, which began in August 2018.
CNA Staff, Jan 18, 2021 / 05:30 am (CNA).- The Australian Archbishop Philip Wilson died on Sunday at the age of 70.
Archbishop Mark Coleridge, president of the Australian bishops’ conference, announced that Wilson had died unexpectedly on the af… […]
CNA Staff, Jan 13, 2021 / 06:30 am (CNA).- Australia’s financial crime watchdog has said that it vastly overestimated Vatican transfers, local media reported on Wednesday.
The Australian newspaper said on Jan. 13 that the Australian Transac… […]
Vatican City, Jan 7, 2021 / 12:00 pm (CNA).- Australia’s financial crime watchdog said Thursday that it is conducting a “detailed review” of Vatican-linked transfers worth $1.8 billion.
The Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis… […]
Australian Cardinal George Pell, 79, has released a new book through Ignatius Press: Prison Journal, Volume 1: The Cardinal Makes His Appeal. Composed of three volumes, the Cardinal offers daily reflections on his conviction and […]
CNA Staff, Dec 10, 2020 / 08:11 pm (CNA).- A bill seeking to ban so-called conversion therapy for sexual orientation or gender identity in the Australian state of Victoria dangerously oversteps the bounds of protecting people from coercive practices, the Archbishop of Melbourne said.
“I encourage every action to protect people from harm. A bill that protected people would have my full support,” Archbishop Peter Comensoli said in a statement.
“The problem is this bill doesn’t merely do what it claims. It targets prayer, and appears to impose silence on people of faith from sharing their beliefs in an open, honest and faithful way. The bill imposes on the right of parents and children to speak plainly and honestly with one another. It robs adults from seeking whatever guidance and pastoral support they seek concerning deeply personal matters,” he said.
Comensoli has been a strong opponent of Victoria’s Change or Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Bill 2020, which was introduced in late November. The bill would outlaw practices that encourage individuals to change or suppress their sexual orientation or gender identity and thereby cause undue harm. It would also outlaw sending someone out of state to partake in such practices. Those in violation of the law would face $10,000 in fines or 10 years in prison.
The bill would empower the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission to launch investigations into reports of people or institutions engaging in conversion practices.
“We’re sending a clear message: no one is ‘broken’ because of their sexuality or gender identity,” Victoria’s attorney general, Jill Hennessy, of the Labor Party, told The Guardian. “These views won’t be tolerated in Victoria and neither will these abhorrent practices.”
The bill defines such practices as those “directed towards a person that is based on the person’s sexual orientation or gender identity which seeks to change or suppress or induce the person to change or suppress their sexual orientation or gender identity. It includes a practice that occurs with or without the person’s consent.”
Catholic opponents of the bill fear that its broad language will allow government officials to go beyond protecting people from harmful practices and will be used to silence free speech in families and the free choices of individuals who want to follow the teachings of their religion.
This could impact Catholic ministries like Courage, which exists to support Catholics with same-sex attraction who desire to live chaste and celibate lives in accordance with the teachings of the Church. Courage does not aim to change participant’s sexual orientation, but rather encourages them to live in accordance with Church teaching.
“Courage members are men and women who experience same-sex attractions and who have made a commitment to strive for chastity. They are inspired by the Gospel call to holiness and the Catholic Church’s beautiful teachings about the goodness and inherent purpose of human sexuality,” the ministry’s website states. “Through our apostolate, people who experience same-sex attraction receive pastoral support in the form of spiritual guidance, community prayer support, and fellowship.”
The bill states that possible conversion or suppression practices could include “religious practices such as prayer based practice, a deliverance practice or exorcisms.”
Comensoli said the government has no business regulating the free choice of how individuals practice their religion. “No government has an interest in what a person prays for, who they pray to, who they pray with, or what conversations happen between members of a family,” he said in his statement.
“It is not clear that parents in Victoria have been told clearly that this bill affects what they can say and how they say it with their own children,” the archbishop added.
“This looks like a dramatic over-reach of the state into family life, private matters, pastoral contexts of conversion, prayer and spiritual accompaniment,” he said.
Bishop Shane Mackinlay of Sandhurst said he supported the intent of the government to protect vulnerable individuals from coercion or harm, but that he shared the Church’s concern for freedom of speech and the freedom of religion.
“I support the intent of preventing coercive and intrusive attempts to interfere with people’s free choice about themselves, their identity, their place in life, their place in society and their relationships,” Mackinlay told the Bellingen Shire Courier-Sun, an Australian news publication.
But he said that “assurances” should be included in the bill that it will not be used to silence religious teachings.
John Steenhoff, managing director of the Human Rights Law Alliance, told The Catholic Weekly in Australia that the bill is “a direct attack on religious beliefs, in particular Christianity, and will target those who hold to traditional convictions on sexual orientation and gender identity issues.”
“It is far too broad and will legislate extreme ideology, particularly around gender ideology,” Steenhoff said. “On first review, the bill is the worst of the recent State legislative efforts that deal with so-called conversion therapy bans and will be dangerous for religious freedom.”
“The bill imposes draconian limits and criminal sanctions on what Australians can think and speak about contentious issues of sexuality and gender,” he added.
Amid mounting pressure to affirm medically the gender identities of transgendered persons, the Australian Catholic Medical Association this past spring defended its Christian approaches to sex, gender, and the human person.
In an online conference in May, the association focused on proposals in several Australian states that have considered mandating the medical affirmation of transgender identity and sexual orientation which could in effect outlaw the Christian vision of human health and psychology in medical care, the association told CNA at the time.
The Victoria conversion therapy bill’s proposal also comes roughly one year after Victoria passed a law that would require priests to violate the seal of confession if anything in the confession gave them reason to suspect occurrences of child abuse. That law carries a sentence of up to three years in prison if a mandatory reporter does not report abuse to the authorities.
A priest is forbidden by both divine and canon law both from violating the seal of confession, as well as from making absolution conditional on future actions in the external forum.
CNA Staff, Dec 4, 2020 / 12:23 am (CNA).- On Thursday, the Catholic bishops of Australia and two other Catholic entities launched Australian Catholic Safeguarding Limited, a company charged with the safeguarding of children against sexual abuse by clergy.
The launch of the agency comes three years after the release of a 2017 Royal Commission report on child sex abuse in the country’s institutions. The new agency was created by the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, Catholic Religious Australia (CRA) and the Association of Ministerial PJPs (Public Juridic Persons).
“We have discerned what was working well and what needed to change, and we are convinced this new national agency will make the Church’s work more coordinated, accountable and best prepared to ensure the safety of people in Catholic settings,” CRA president Br. Peter Carroll FMS said in a December 3 statement marking the launch.
The new agency, also known as ACSL, “will reduce duplication and consolidate work previously undertaken by Catholic Professional Standards Limited, the Implementation Advisory Group and the Australian Catholic Centre for Professional Standards,” the statement noted.
According to a fact sheet on the ACSL, while it is “hoped” that all Australian Catholic entities will subscribe to the new group, it will not be mandatory. Those entities that subscribe to the ACSL will be expected to comply with its safeguarding standards, conduct reviews and audits of their abuse prevention systems at least every three years, and provide ACSL with a copy of their reviews, which will be published on the ACSL’s website.
The establishment of the ACSL is one of many reforms being made by the Church in Australia after the release of the Royal Commission report, which found serious failings in the protection of children from abuse in the Catholic Church and other major secular and religious institutions.
Other changes made in the wake of the report include a program to compensate victims, and an obligation on the part of clergy and religious to report abuse accusations to their local ordinary or metropolitan archbishop.
The Australian bishops’ conference responded positively to nearly all the Royal Commission’s recommendations, but has defended the sanctity of the confessional seal.
Archbishop Mark Coleridge, president of the Australian Catholic bishop’s conference, said that the safeguarding agency was established after an extensive consultation process with people both inside and outside of the Church, including abuse survivors and their advocates.
“Australian Catholic Safeguarding Limited will build on the strong work of the previous bodies, including in demanding accountability of Catholic entities and in requiring independent audits and reviews of adherence to the National Catholic Safeguarding Standards,” he said.
Eva Skira is the chair of Association of Ministerial PJPs, a group whose members include canonical stewards of Church ministries in areas such as education, health care, disability and social services.
Skira said the group supported the creation of the new agency and is “deeply committed to child protection and safeguarding in our various contexts.”
“We are very pleased to be collaborators with the Bishops Conference and CRA, which have made significant progress in recent years,” Skira added.
Carroll said the inclusion of the Association of Ministerial PJPs in the creation of the safeguarding agency would help to extend its impact into more broadly Catholic contexts.
“Our focus must always be on the safety of all those who come into contact with the Church,” he said.
© Catholic World Report