Monday, July 05, 2010

Aussie archbishop apologizes for church sex abuse

The Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne will apologize in a pastoral letter this weekend for crimes of sexual abuse committed by clergy and will acknowledge the Catholic church's failures in dealing with the issue.

The strongly worded letter from Archbishop Denis Hart will be read at every mass in every church in the 219 parishes of the Melbourne archdiocese Saturday and Sunday, Australian newspapers reports.

"The scourge of sexual abuse continues to cause great distress and in many cases a crisis of faith among Catholics,'' Hart writes.

"The criminal offences and breaches of vows committed by some priests and religious bring shame upon the entire church ... For me personally, this is one of the saddest times of my 43 years in the Catholic priesthood.

"With great humility we acknowledge that the crimes of the perpetrators have done great harm. We recognize that in the past we have not always dealt appropriately with offenders. We have had to learn from our mistakes, and continue to do so."

However Hart defended an Australian church protocol that limits compensation to victims of priestly sexual abuse to $75,000.

Hart says that since 1996 about 300 victims have been compensated, mostly for sexual abuse that took place between 30 and 80 years ago, and that there were few complaints of abuse after the 1970s. Those victims were abused by 86 offenders, 60 of them priests in the archdiocese, of whom 35 are dead.

The apology letter comes on the heels of the sentencing Friday of Catholic priest John Sidney Denham to almost 20 years in jail on child sex charges against 25 boys in Sydney and elsewhere in New South Wales between 1968 and 1986.

Denham described himself as a "scumbag pedophile" during the trial.

A spokesman for the Catholic archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, said he has no intention of writing a similar letter to parishioners in the archdiocese most directly affected by Denham's crimes, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

Pell was widely criticized in 2002 when he said that abortion was a "worse moral scandal" than priests sexually abusing young people, the Morning Herald said.

Pell supported Pope Benedict's apology to sexual abuse victims at World Youth Day in 2008 but has not made a similar apology.

SIC: TS