WorldIn today's News International Gem and Jewellery exhibition in ColomboSYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia should introduce a law forcing religious leaders to report child abuse, including Catholic priests told of abuse in the confessional, said a report on Friday which detailed institutional abuse, particularly in the Catholic Church. One the country’s top catholics, Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart, said such a law would undermine a central tenet of Catholicism, the sacredness of the confessional, and warned that any priest breaking the seal of confession would be excommunicated. The 17-volume document from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse marks the end of one of the world’s biggest inquiries into child abuse and leaves it to the government to decide whether to enact its recommendations. Confession cannot be broken: Australian Catholic Bishops Conference president Archbishop Denis Hart. The report detailed tens of thousands of child victims, saying their abusers were “not a case of a few rotten apples”.

Source: Sunday Times December 15, 2017 11:03 UTC