Australia’s Catholic leaders apologize for failing to act on child abuse cases

Australian Catholic leaders vowed Friday that the church's "shameful" history of child abuse and cover-ups will never be repeated, but rejected a national inquiry's call to report such assaults disclosed in confession. The church was formally responding to a five-year royal commission into institutional child abuse, ordered by the government after a decade of pressure to investigate widespread allegations across the country. "Many bishops failed to listen, failed to believe, and failed to act," said Catholic Bishops Conference president Archbishop Mark Coleridge. "Those failures allowed some abusers to offend again and again, with tragic and sometimes fatal consequences. The bis...

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