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Love, honesty essential for facing sex abuse crisis, archbishop says
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ROME (CNS) -- Love, honesty and devotion to Christ are essential for facing the crisis in the church and in the priesthood caused by cases of clerical sexual abuse, an Australian archbishop said. Since the 1990s, when the scandal first broke, "everyone has learned that several points are crucial: care for the victims, following the law, dealing effectively and decisively with perpetrators, making sure we have proper procedures in place to safeguard children and backing up what we believe with our actions," said Archbishop Philip Wilson of Adelaide. The archbishop is a longtime participant in what is known as the Anglophone Conference, an international group of bishops and church child protection officers who have met annually for almost 20 years to identify effective strategies for combating and responding to clerical sexual abuse. "We must be humble and accept the pain of the present moment as the horrible realities are revealed," he said March 11 during a break in a theological conference on the priesthood. More than 500 cardinals, bishops and priests gathered at Rome's Pontifical Lateran University for the opening session of the conference sponsored by the Congregation for Clergy to mark the Year for Priests. The clerical sex abuse scandal was mentioned only in passing the first morning of the conference when an Italian sociologist said the scandal in the United States has not appeared to have a negative impact on vocations. Bishop Gerhard Muller of Regensburg, Germany, where the latest scandal has involved the diocesan cathedral's famous boys' choir and school, was one of the main speakers on the opening day of the conference.
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