On 12 November 2012, Julia Gillard, then Australian Prime Minister, announced the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. At the time, Cardinal George Pell argued that the Catholic Church was ‘no worse than other organisations’ (Zwartz, Reference Zwartz2012, p. 18). The final report of the Commission was presented to the Governor-General just over 5 years later, on 15 December 2017 (Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, 2017).

In volume 16 of the final report, the Royal Commission (2017) reported that 15 of the 57 case studies were devoted to Catholic institutions, and that of the 4029 survivors who told of their abuse, 2489 (61.8%) were abused in Catholic institutions.

Abuse of children in Catholic institutions and the international scale of the problem are rarely out of the media. The media coverage has been even more extensive in 2019.

In February 2019, Pope Francis called a conference of nearly 200 delegates at the Vatican. The Pope convened Catholic leaders from around the world for the four-day meeting aimed at addressing the child abuse scandals that have plagued the church for many years (see, for example, Pullella, Reference Pullella2019).

Before the meeting even began, there were many concerns expressed that there would be little change. Professor Lytton, for example, who more than 10 years earlier wrote a book Holding Bishops Accountable (Reference Lytton2008), stated in The Conversation that the church was still not prepared to take what he regarded as the ‘essential step’:

On the very day that The Age and other papers carried major stories of victims’ criticisms at the conclusion of the papal summit (see, Miller, Reference Miller2019), the suppression order on the trial of Cardinal George Pell was lifted. The following day the front pages of Australia’s newspapers carried headlines such as ‘Cardinal to Convict’ (Ferguson & Akerman, Reference Ferguson and Akerman2019), ‘Pell Guilty’ (Cooper, Reference Cooper2019) and ‘Guilty as Sin’ (Deery, Reference Deery2019). These headlines were in large, block capital letters and the news stories ran for weeks.

These are indeed, as the present Archbishop of Melbourne stated recently, the ‘darkest days’ in the church’s Melbourne history. In a speech, he described the church as standing on ‘broken ground and crumbling edifices’ (Ferguson, Reference Ferguson2019, p. 11). According to Ferguson’s report, Pell’s name was not mentioned, but the Archbishop made it clear that ‘the church was reeling’ (Ferguson, Reference Ferguson2019, p. 11) after the judgement.

These events made the almost simultaneous release of the briefing paper The Holy See and the United Nations by the Child Rights Information Network (2019) even more timely. The Child Rights Information Network (CRIN) paper notes that the United Nations examined the children’s rights record of the Holy See in 2014 and made many recommendations to improve matters. However,

As the CRIN briefing paper notes, in 2014, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child and the UN Committee against torture both issued recommendations:

CRIN states that the briefing is released because the Holy See once again has not submitted the required information on time, thus delaying the 5-year review. The briefing paper notes that in the case of the 2014 review, the Holy See had submitted its documentation 14 years late (see also CRIN, 2014).

The paper then summarises what are described as ‘some of the most despicable findings’ CRIN has gathered (CRIN, 2019, p. 2). The first is that the church extraordinarily still does not have a ‘zero tolerance policy on child sexual abuse’ (CRIN, 2019, p. 2). One of the most appalling practices, widely used in Australia – the so-called ‘geographical cure’ involving transferring abusers ‘from one parish to another or abroad’ – is a practice of covering up crimes that are still not ‘explicitly prohibited’.

The systematic ‘lack of transparency’ and ‘strict secrecy rules’ continue according to CRIN and:

There have been no reforms to ensure that bishops who cover up crimes are held accountable. Instead, there are ‘non-binding guidelines’ (CRIN, 2019, p. 3). Church officials, according to the Briefing Paper, have continued to obstruct justice and:

The briefing paper provides full details of the UN recommendations made to the Holy See and the subsequent action, or lack thereof. The briefing has grouped these recommendations into 10 broad categories: Accountability; Transparency; the Pontifical Committee for the Protection of Minors; Reform of Canon Law; Reporting Obligations; Protection and Prevention; Redress; Reporting Channels for Victims; Extradition; and Limitation Periods (CRIN, 2019, pp. 4–14).

This detailed analysis by the Child Rights Information Network powerfully demonstrates that too many children are still being subjected to a church-constructed Hell on the Way to Heaven as Foster and Kennedy (Reference Foster and Kennedy2010) so movingly described in their book.

As a ‘survivor of child sexual abuse’ wrote in The Age at the conclusion of the papal summit, the church has once again failed to ‘take responsibility’, failed to ‘be accountable’, failed to ‘be transparent’ and failed to declare ‘zero tolerance’ (Gogarty, Reference Gogarty2019, p. 33). In the words of the briefing paper, the ‘despicable’ practices continueFootnote ¹.