Writer
Kieran Tapsell
Kieran Tapsell is a retired Australian civil lawyer and the author of Potiphar’s Wife: The Vatican’s Secret and Child Sexual Abuse (2014). An updated second edition will be published early in 2025.
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Pope Francis and practising what one preaches
Pope Francis has called upon Church authorities to cooperate with civil authorities in relation to child sexual abuse by Church personnel. When it comes to the Vatican cooperating, it is a different story. Continue reading »
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Pope Francis’ reforms the Church’s disciplinary system in response to royal commission
One of the main reasons for the Catholic Church shifting around abusive priests was because its disciplinary system was dysfunctional. Far more children were abused than would have occurred if it had a decent one. The Royal Commission made recommendations for change, and Pope Francis has adopted some of them, but he has retained two Continue reading »
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Pope Francis on just wars, capital punishment and voluntary assisted dying
Pope Francis and his Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith have recently made pronouncements on these life and death issues. The Church’s teaching on the taking of human life has never been particularly coherent. Continue reading »
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A Former President of Colombia Has His Oscar Wilde Moment
Senator Álvaro Uribe, a former president of Colombia, commenced a private prosecution against Senator Iván Cepeda for attempting to pervert the course of justice by paying witness to make false allegations against him. The judge dismissed the case, and found that it was Uribe who was doing the perverting. The matter is now before the Continue reading »
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Pope Francis finally makes bishops accountable for cover-ups
On 16 July 2020, the Vatican published a manual for dealing with allegations of child sexual abuse against Church personnel. It marks a significant change in culture expressed in canon law for the last 100 years where the Church was more concerned about providing immunity for clergy child sex perpetrators than it was for the Continue reading »
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KIERAN TAPSELL. Pope Francis Abolishes the Pontifical Secret Over Child Sexual Abuse.
On 17 December 2019, Pope Francis abolished the pontifical secret over child sexual abuse by clergy. This was the first step in returning the Catholic Church to its 15 century old tradition, which it abandoned in 1917, of regarding child sexual abuse as a crime that needed to be punished by the State. Francis has Continue reading »
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KIERAN TAPSELL: Has the Pontifical Secret Been Secretly Buried?
After the criticisms of the pontifical secret at the February summit conference in Rome on child sexual abuse, it was widely expected that it would be abolished. It never happened, but recent announcements by two bishops’ conferences suggest that it may have been quietly buried behind closed doors. Continue reading »
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KIERAN TAPSELL: Pope Francis and the Closed Door Syndrome
For all his good points, Pope Francis has a credibility problem over child sexual abuse. Public statements are made, but once the door is closed, the paper that comes out contradicts what has been said. His latest Apostolic Letter, Vos Estis Lux Mundi, is no exception. Continue reading »
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KIERAN TAPSELL. The Australian Church Response to the Royal Commission Final Report on the Pontifical Secret.
The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference in its response to the Royal Commission’s Final Report has claimed that the pontifical secret does not inhibit bishops from reporting all allegations of child sexual abuse against clergy to the civil authorities. In view of statements to the contrary by the Church’s senior canon lawyers in the Roman Curia, Continue reading »
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KIERAN TAPSELL. Accountability, Clericalism and Culture in the Catholic Church
Pope Francis has little chance of overcoming clericalism and the toxic culture of cover up in the Catholic Church unless he changes those parts of canon law which are dripping with it. Continue reading »
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KIERAN TAPSELL. The ball is in Pope Francis’s court over the culture of cover-up.
Pope Francis’ letter to the people of Chile over child sexual abuse in that country and its cover-up would suggest that he might have read the Final Report of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Instead of blaming the “bad apples” amongst the bishops for the cover-up, he acknowledges for the Continue reading »
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“Catastrophic institutional failure” can be fixed
The Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse spent five years interviewing over 8,000 survivors, their abusers and personnel from institutions that had covered up the abuse. The Commission found that 61.8% of all survivors within religious institutions had been under the care of the Catholic Church. The Commission’s 17 volume Final Report, released Continue reading »
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KIERAN TAPSELL. Secrets and the Royal Commission’s final report.
Media attention has been drawn to the recommendation in the Final Report of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that religious confession should not be exempted from civil law requirements to report child sexual abuse. However, of much greater practical significance is the recommendation that the Catholic Church’s pontifical secret should Continue reading »
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KIERAN TAPSELL. The Royal Commission Report on the Melbourne Archdiocese
On 5 December 2017, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse released a redacted version of its Report of Case Study No. 35: the Archdiocese of Melbourne. It strongly criticized Church personnel for failure to protect children under its care. It blamed both the culture of secrecy and inadequate structures for the Continue reading »
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KIERAN TAPSELL. University report lifts the lid on child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church
Researchers from RMIT University in Melbourne have produced a landmark report on the systemic reasons for child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. Continue reading »
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KIERAN TAPSELL. Sex Abuse and the Seal of the Confessional
The Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has just released its Criminal Justice Report in which it deals with many matters relating to the way child sexual abuse within institutions is handled by the Australian criminal justice system. In the course of that report, it recommends mandatory reporting of all suspected Continue reading »
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KIERAN TAPSELL. A Different Scorecard on Pope Francis
Pope Francis has rightly been acclaimed for his stand on climate change, poverty, inequality and refugees, but on these issues he can only encourage others to act. When it comes to the role of the laity in Church governance and the cover up of child sexual abuse, Pope Francis’ rhetoric does not match his actions. Continue reading »
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KIERAN TAPSELL. ‘The Attachment’ by Ailsa Piper and Tony Doherty.
The subtitle to this book is Letters from a Most Unlikely Friendship, and it consists of a series of letters with some occasional background comment between a “lapsed” Catholic (although none of the authors use that word) turned “agnostic with pantheist leanings” and a well known Sydney Catholic priest, Tony Doherty. Continue reading »
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KIERAN TAPSELL. The Royal Commission, Religious Liberty and the Jehovah’s Witnesses
A more difficult issue is the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ practice of “shunning” those who decide to leave the organisation as adults because of sexual abuse. It may be that the Commission is left with no other alternative but to condemn it as cruel. Quite apart from Church/State separation issues, legislation can be effective to overrule Jehovah’s Continue reading »
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KIERAN TAPSELL. A Response to Francis Sullivan
I agree with what Francis Sullivan has said in the edited version of his speech to Catalyst for Renewal. But there is a recitation of history in the full version that cannot go unchallenged. Continue reading »
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KIERAN TAPSELL. Vatican Reform on Child Sexual Abuse in Disarray – Does Pope Francis get it?
Zero tolerance in a professional context almost invariably means dismissal, but Pope Francis’s claim that the Church has a “zero tolerance” policy is not borne out by the figures he presented to the United Nations: only one quarter of all priests found to have sexually abused children have been dismissed. That’s a 75% tolerance not Continue reading »
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KIERAN TAPSELL. The Royal Commission and Religious Liberty
Three law professors, Michael Quinlan and Keith Thompson (Notre Dame) and Frank Brennan (ACU) have criticized any attempt by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse to discuss the doctrines and canon law of the Catholic Church on the grounds that such a discussion would breach religious liberty and the separation Continue reading »
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Kieran Tapsell. Cardinal Barbarin and accountability.
Cardinal Philippe Barbarin of Lyon is currently being investigated by French police for failing to report sexual offences against children by some of his priests. It is alleged that he knew about allegations against them in 2007 and 2009. Despite his denials of any wrongdoing, there have been calls for his resignation. On Good Friday, retired Continue reading »
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Kieran Tapsell. Bishop Ronald Mulkearns: Blaming the Foot Soldier
The “Nuremberg defence” takes its name from the claim by Nazi officials at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal that they should be acquitted because they were following “superior orders”. In one of the most significant judgments in international law, the Nuremberg Tribunal held that following superior orders in the case of crimes against humanity is Continue reading »
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Kieran Tapsell. Cardinal Pell and the Church’s “Omerta”
Cardinal George Pell must now be regretting not having come back to Australia to give his evidence to the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in the relatively small town of Ballarat in the State of Victoria. By claiming that his medical condition did not allow him to travel, and offering Continue reading »
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Kieran Tapsell. Pope Francis Continues the Policy of Cover Up
In May 2014, my book, Potiphar’s Wife: The Vatican Secret and Child Sexual Abuse was published. It accused six popes from 1922 onwards (Pius XI – Benedict XVI) of establishing, confirming and expanding a system of cover up of child sexual abuse by clergy through the strictest secrecy imposed by canon law over allegations and Continue reading »
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Kieran Tapsell. Finnigan’s Wake
When Dorothy Parker was told that President Calvin Coolidge had just died, she remarked: “How can they tell?” I was reminded of this while watching the moribund memory of Bishop Brian Finnigan when giving evidence to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Finnigan showed all the tell-tale signs of being physically Continue reading »
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Kieran Tapsell. The Royal Commission – Damning with faint understatement.
The reports issued by the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse at times seem quietly understated. The Commission seems to invite readers to draw their own conclusions – damning or otherwise – from the facts the Commission has found. This is particularly true of its report into its Case Study No Continue reading »
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Kieran Tapsell. Keeping the Australian people in the dark.
On 22 April 2013, Francis Sullivan, the CEO of the Truth, Justice and Healing Council (“TJHC”) that represents the Australian Catholic Church at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, said: “The Australian community has been kept in the dark for too long.” Indeed it has, and since the setting up of Continue reading »
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A Clash between Church and State in Australia?
The recent appearance by retired Bishop Geoffrey Robinson at the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has raised the possibility of a clash between Australia and the Vatican along similar lines to what occurred in Ireland in 2011 after the publication of the Murphy Commission’s Cloyne Report. Continue reading »
