Church 'centuries out of date'

A GROUP pressing for reform has told an abuse inquiry the church is a conflicted organisation with 17th century governance.

A GROUP of Catholics pressing for reform within the church has told an abuse inquiry the church is a "private and conflicted organisation" with a 17th century system of governance.

The group, Catholics for Renewal, said the church was "self-protective" on the issue of pedophile priests and must be made to report abuse allegations to police.

In its submission to the Victorian parliamentary inquiry into the Handling of Child Abuse by Religious and Other Organisations, the group, chaired by senior Catholic Peter Johnstone, quoted the late cardinal Carlo Maria Martini saying that the church was centuries "out of date".

It said the church's governance was "feudal in origin", autocratically ruled by socially isolated and increasingly aged bishops.

Furthermore the church did not approach "modern standards of good governance or established Australian values of transparency, inclusivity and accountability".

Mr Johnstone is a former chairman of Jesuit Social Services and has worked in senior positions at all levels of government, including director general of Community Services Victoria.

He said Catholics for Renewal was a group of committed Catholics who loved the church, but felt "very let down" by the way it had been run.

In its submission, the group said Australian church leaders "were often aware of the abuse of children by particular priests or religious in their charge but failed to act properly on that knowledge to protect the child from harm, with apparent endorsement from the Vatican".

"Many church leaders shamefully colluded in covering up abuse and reassigning abusers to other ministry appointments," the submission said.

Group member Maria McGarvie said it was possible under the church's Melbourne Response and Towards Healing protocols to investigate allegations of abuse by priests and find them substantiated, but not report the claims to the authorities, "thus leaving a potential sexual predator at large".

Former priest Phil O'Donnell also told the inquiry yesterday that former Melbourne archbishop Frank Little, who died in 2008, was hostile when pedophile allegations were made against former priest Wilfred (Bill) Baker, describing the allegations as despicable even though there were "multiple consistent allegations" against him from the early 1960s.

In 1999, Father Baker pleaded guilty to 16 charges of indecent assault and one of gross indecency, involving eight boys, aged 10 to 13, between 1960 and 1979 and was sentenced to four years' jail, with parole after two years.

Mr O'Donnell, who was a priest in the Melbourne archdiocese from 1969 to 1999, said church authorities from the 1950s on had been presented with allegations of sexual abuse by clergy, but had chosen "loyalty and obedience to Rome" over the care and protection of children.

He said the late priest Peter Searson, with whom he worked at Sunbury, in Melbourne's north, had a "psychotic delusional personality" and it was "unbelievably obvious" that he had a serious psychological disorder.

"This is a matter of accountability," Mr O'Donnell said.

"For far too long, predatory priests have had unlimited unaccountable access to young children and have sexually assaulted so many known and sadly so many unknown boys and girls."