Church pledges to hand over secret abuse files

THE Catholic Church will provide any new evidence of crimes contained in secret files to the police.

THE man who will lead the Catholic Church's engagement with the royal commission into institutional child abuse has said he will provide any new evidence of crimes contained in secret files to the police.

The incoming chief executive of the church's Truth, Justice and Healing Council, Francis Sullivan, said he had been assured he would have access to these files, in order to provide the commission with the information it seeks.

"I certainly am not interested in being part of a process to defend the indefensible," Mr Sullivan said.

"We are going to co-operate fully. The point of this exercise from our perspective is enabling people who have been victims and have been damaged by these scandals to have their story heard."

Within Australia, however, the Catholic Church is organised into a number of semi-autonomous dioceses and religious orders, which would be responsible for the disclosure of their records.

Church sources said different orders had previously shown some reluctance to co-operate with centralised investigations of alleged child abuse, although this pre-dated the announcement last month of a national royal commission.

Mr Sullivan is widely respected on both sides of federal politics. He stepped down from his position as secretary-general of the Australian Medical Association earlier this month, before which he spent 14 years as chief executive of Catholic Health Australia.

He said his new role would focus on identifying systemic failures of child protection within the church, promoting the "healing" of those who have been abused and working to prevent child abuse.

"If through the course of this exercise, things are revealed that are blatantly illegal, then obviously they should be revealed to the police," he said.

While the royal commission's terms of reference are yet to be announced, it is almost certain to focus on how the Catholic Church has dealt with repeated allegations of child abuse over a number of decades.

"As an ordinary Catholic", Mr Sullivan said he was ashamed at the perception that senior clerics had conspired to disguise abuse committed by their priests.

"We are going to be positively embracing the royal commission. We not going to be nit-picking and point-scoring. We are keen on enabling the truth to come out," he said.

Among the Truth, Justice and Healing Council's first tasks, he said, would be the review of the mechanisms in place within the Catholic Church to respond to claims of abuse, known as Towards Healing and the Melbourne Response.

Each has been severely criticised by victims of abuse who have experienced them, while senior officials, including Australia's most senior cleric, Cardinal George Pell, have conceded the need for reform.

Mr Sullivan also said he intended to consider whether confidentiality agreements made as part of settlements between the church and victims of abuse could impede their ability to give evidence to the commission.

The task of "healing" those victims of child sexual abuse was the most difficult facing the council, he said.

"If it is not possible, then as people of faith, what are we doing?"