A bishop who first arrived in Australia as a refugee has said that he suffered sexual abuse by a priest.
Bishop Vincent Long Van Nguyen of Parramatta made the disclosure at a royal commission hearing in Sydney last week.
“I was also a victim of sexual abuse by clergy when I first came to Australia, even though I was an adult,” he told the royal commission investigating institutional responses to child sexual abuse.
“That had a powerful impact on me and how I want to … walk in the shoes of other victims and really endeavour to attain justice and dignity for them.”
In his testimony Bishop Long said the Church should consider removing honorifics from priests found guilty of abuse. He added that titles and privileges “breed clerical superiority and elitism”.
He said he was doing everything in his power to achieve justice for victims of abuse in his diocese.
“How can I look these victims in the eye and say, I share your pain, I share your suffering, without doing everything in my power to bring about justice, dignity and healing for them?” he said.
Bishop Long was one of hundreds of thousands of “boat people” who fled Vietnam during years of strife in the 1970s and 80s.
He has explained that his boat was found after seven days at sea. Its passengers were “half alive and half dead” and had had no food or water for days.
He and his family were placed in a refugee camp in Malaysia for 16 months before being accepted as refugees in Australia in 1981, when he was about 20.
He was ordained as a Conventual Franciscan priest in 1989 and as an auxiliary bishop in Melbourne in 2011.
Bishop Long was one of several Australian bishops who testified before the royal commission last week.
Archbishop Timothy Costelloe of Perth said the crisis was a “catastrophic failure in many respects, but primarily in leadership”.
But he said the Church had learned lessons. “Precisely because we have failed so badly, our society has a right to expect us to do what we can to contribute to a solution, if we can,” Archbishop Costelloe said. “There may be many people who would think that our record and our reputation is so damaged that we have nothing to offer, and I would understand that, but I think that, tragically and unfortunately, we have learned an awful lot about this terrible scourge.”
Congolese churches attacked as president refuses to quit
The Catholic Church in the Democratic Republic of Congo is being “deliberately targeted” with acts of violence, a cardinal has said.
Cardinal Laurent Monsengwo of Kinshasa published a message on Sunday condemning two attacks on a parish and a seminary.
In his message, the cardinal said that the Church was being deliberately attacked “in order to sabotage her mission of peace and reconciliation”. “Along with all bishops, we denounce these acts of violence, which are likely to plunge our country further into unspeakable chaos,” he said.
Last week St Dominic’s Church in Limete, Kinshasa, was vandalised and its tabernacle desecrated while a community of Carmelite nuns nearby was also attacked. A seminary in Malole was set on fire.
The Democratic Republic of Congo is in a state of political crisis as the president, Joseph Kabila, has refused to step down from office, though he has no mandate to govern.
The Church brokered an agreement between the president and the opposition which would mean he would step down after an election this year – but Mr Kabila has held back from signing the agreement.
Vatican boosts quake-hit economy
The Pope’s almoner is on a mission to support businesses in earthquake-hit central Italy – by buying large amounts of cheese, prosciutto and other foods.
The Vatican said that all of the food purchased by Archbishop Konrad Krajewski would be distributed to soup kitchens in Rome that help the homeless.
The economy in the region has been struggling since the major earthquakes in July and August last year.
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