Australian abuse report calls for end to sanctity of confession

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia should introduce a law forcing religious leaders to report child abuse, including Catholic priests told of abuse in the confessional, said a report on Friday which detailed institutional abuse, particularly in the Catholic Church.

One the country’s top catholics, Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart, said such a law would undermine a central tenet of Catholicism, the sacredness of the confessional, and warned that any priest breaking the seal of confession would be excommunicated.

The 17-volume document from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse marks the end of one of the world’s biggest inquiries into child abuse and leaves it to the government to decide whether to enact its recommendations.

Confession cannot be broken: Australian Catholic Bishops Conference president Archbishop Denis Hart. Photo: Darrian Traynor

The five-year investigation found “multiple and persistent failings of institutions to keep children safe, the cultures of secrecy and cover-up, and the devastating affects child sexual abuse can have on an individual’s life”, the commission said in a statement.

The report detailed tens of thousands of child victims, saying their abusers were “not a case of a few rotten apples”.