The Catholic Church in Australia has been 'shaken to the core' over the abuse scandal and is facing the biggest crisis in its history, the Archbishop of Brisbane has said.
Mark Coleridge, who is the Vice President of the Australian Bishops' Conference, was speaking after visiting Rome with fellow Australian bishops for talks about the fallout of the clerical sexual abuse crisis.
Australia's Royal Commission inquiry into how institutions handled child sexual abuse was discussed at the Vatican summit. The scandal has been brought into focus after the Australian police's decision to charge Cardinal George Pell, the Vatican treasurer and former Archbishop of Sydney, with historic sexual offences.
Cardinal Pell has taken a leave of absence from his job as Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy while he seeks to clear his name, and has denied the charges against him.
Archbishop Coleridge told The Tablet: 'The Catholic Church in Australia is now facing the greatest crisis in her relatively brief history,' adding: 'The Church has been shaken to the core.'
According to the Catholic News Agency, members of the Australian delegation were Archbishop Denis James Hart of Melbourne, President of the bishops' conference; Archbishop Mark Benedict Coleridge of Brisbane, Vice President of the conference; and Justice Neville John Owen of the Truth, Justice and Healing Council in Australia.
The meeting came two months after the Royal Commission, which was established in 2013, released 85 proposed changes to the country's criminal justice system.
Among various suggestions, the commission recommended that the failure to report sexual abuse, even in religious confessions, be made a criminal offence.
That suggestion was met with vocal opposition by Church leaders, who called it a 'government intrusion' into the spiritual realm.
At a brief, preliminary hearing in July shortly after returning to Australia, Pell told the court he would be pleading 'not guilty' to all charges, and will maintain his innocence.
According to BBC News, Pell's committal hearing will be held on March 5, with up to 50 possible witnesses available to give testimony. The hearing is expected to last four weeks, after which the magistrate will decide if there is enough evidence to take the case to trial.
