Adelaide Archbishop Philip Wilson admits he sometimes failed in his dealings with child sex victims

ADELAIDE’S Catholic Archbishop Philip Wilson admits he has sometimes failed in his dealings with child sex abuse survivors.

ADELAIDE’S Catholic Archbishop Philip Wilson admits he has sometimes failed in his dealings with child sex abuse survivors.

Archbishop Wilson, who is fighting a NSW charge that he concealed child sex abuse by a priest, says the Adelaide archdiocese’s dealings with survivors has sometimes not been successful.

“There are some parts of our experience in Adelaide that I wasn’t happy that we did it as well as we could,” he told the child sex abuse royal commission on Thursday.

“Sometimes I have failed in that area but I would really make it a high point to try to engage with the survivors as much as I can.”

Australia’s most senior Catholic leaders’ efforts to address the church’s “catastrophic failure” to protect children will be tested when all five metropolitan archbishops answer to the child sex abuse royal commission.

Archbishop Mark Coleridge, front, with, back from left, Archbishops Denis Hart, Anthony Fisher, Philip Wilson and Timothy Costelloe at the hearing in Sydney yesterday. Picture: DAVID MOIR / AAP

The archbishops of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth jointly faced the royal commission in Sydney on Thursday.

Sydney Archbishop Anthony Fisher says he has been appalled by the conduct of priests and religious who abused children, by the failures of some church leaders and by the damage the abuse has done to victims.

“I feel ashamed and contaminated,” Archbishop Fisher said in a statement to the commission.

“I am determined that those of us in leadership positions in the church do all we can to ensure such things never happen again in the church; that those entrusted with the care of the young and vulnerable keep them safe; and that those already harmed are brought justice and compassion.”

A total of 1880 priests, religious brothers and sisters and lay people have been identified as alleged perpetrators in abuse claims made to the church by 4445 victims, although many more victims have not come forward.

The church has paid $276 million in compensation to victims. Perth Archbishop Timothy Costelloe says the response to the child sex abuse scandal by some church authorities, especially in the past, has been hopelessly inadequate.

He says the high incidence of child sex abuse indicates there has been catastrophic failure to protect children in the Catholic Church in Australia.

“Sexual abuse in the Catholic Church is a shocking betrayal of everything the church claims to stand for,” Archbishop Costelloe’s statement said.