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), Second Edition, Updated and Expanded (2024).”

Kieran's recent articles

Pope Francis and zero tolerance of child sexual abuse

Pope Francis and zero tolerance of child sexual abuse

Since his election in 2013, Pope Francis has publicly claimed eight times that the Catholic Church practises “zero tolerance” towards child sexual abuse by clergy. At worst, this is simply untrue, and at best, like Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland, he makes the expression mean whatever he wants it to mean.

Pope Francis and practising what one preaches

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.

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 of the most harshly criticized canons.

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.

A Former President of Colombia Has His Oscar Wilde Moment

Senator lvaro Uribe, a former president of Colombia, commenced a private prosecution against Senator Ivn 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 Colombian Supreme Court, and Uribe has been placed under house arrest.

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 welfare of their victims.

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 still not gone far enough because the restoration of that tradition requires the imposition of mandatory reporting to the civil authorities, as demanded by two United Nations Committees.

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.

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.

KIERAN TAPSELL. Anzac Day and apologies for the sins of the past.

Apologies for the sins of the past have always created controversy. If it is accepted that nations are entitled to glory in the great achievements of their individual members, then it is also appropriate that they regret what other members have done.

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, three judicial commissions in different parts of the world and two United Nations Committees, Pope Francis has no choice but to clarify the situation.

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.

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 first time that there are problems with the barrel. However, he will never get rid of the culture of cover-up unless follows the recommendation of the Royal Commission and two United Nations committees and abolishes the pontifical secret imposed by canon law over clergy sexual...

"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 volumeFinal Report, released on 15 Dec 2017, made hundreds of recommendations for change in structures, practices and internal laws of institutions. Many of the recommendations addressed to the church involved changes to canon law. Two of these recommendations received massive media attention: that celibacy no longer be...

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 Churchs pontifical secret should not apply to such abuse.

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 failure, and described those failures a number of times as appalling.

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.

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 child sexual abuse within institutions and the creation of new offences of failing to take proper care to prevent such abuse.

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. He will never have the moral authority of a Nelson Mandela while he refuses to initiate changes to canon law that would bring them into line.

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.

KIERAN TAPSELL. The Royal Commission, Religious Liberty and the Jehovahs Witnesses

A more difficult issue is the Jehovahs 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 Jehovahs Witnesses wishes that their children not have blood transfusions, but it is a blunt and useless tool to make them love their neighbour.

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.

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 Franciss 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. Thats a 75% tolerance not zero.

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 of church and state.

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 auxiliary Bishop Geoffrey Robinson of Sydney, Australia, called on Pope Francis to request the resignation of every bishop who has failed to properly address cases of child sexual abuse. It is unlikely that Pope Francis will agree, because it would undermine the...

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 no defence, although it may be a factor in determining the appropriate punishment. Justice Robert Jackson, the chief prosecutor, wanted to make heads of state accountable for the orders they gave, and for what they allowed to happen under their watch. Historically, he pointed...

Kieran Tapsell. Cardinal Pell and the Churchs 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 to give video evidence in Rome, he has turned his performance in the witness box into a media feast that otherwise might have gone unnoticed in the international press. First there was the Tim Minchin song that went viral, Come Home Cardinal Pell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtHOmforqxk...

Kieran Tapsell. Pope Francis Continues the Policy of Cover Up

In May 2014, my book, Potiphars 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 information gained by the Church in its internal inquiries. On 9 April 2015, I wrote a piece for this blog stating that it looked like Pope Francis will be the seventh pope to follow suit when he rejected the call from the United Nations Committees...

Kieran Tapsell. Finnigans 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 alive, but his performance in the witness box left his credibility dead in the water. The Royal Commission could tell. At the end of two days of evidence, Counsel Assisting the Commission, Angus Stewart SC accused Finnigan of consistently distancing himself from any knowledge of...

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 16, on the Melbourne Response. For two years Bishop Geoffrey Robinson and his team developed Towards Healing, a national protocol for dealing with child sex abuse within the Church, in consultation with the Australian bishops, one of whom was George Pell,...

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 the Royal Commission, the Australian Church has been open and frank about some its own failures. But on one critical issue, it has failed to be frank, and has continued the policy set by Pope Benedict XVI in his 2010 pastoral letter to the people...

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 Commissions Cloyne Report.

Kieran Tapsell: Mental Reservation at the Child Sexual Abuse Royal Commission

Current Affairs On 28 May 2015, the convicted serial paedophile and former Catholic priest from Ballarat, Gerald Ridsdale gave evidence to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse by video link from prison. Ridsdale is 81 years of age, and one might have expected him to have some memory problems. It is surprising, however, that he did not recollect ever living in the same house for a year with one of the few Australians to be made a Cardinal, George Pell. In the course of the afternoon, the Chair, Justice McLellan asked Ridsdale if he was...

Kieran Tapsell: The Problem with Bishop Finn

On 21 April 2015, the Vatican announced that Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas, Missouri, had resigned. The announcement referred to the Code of Canon Law that states that a bishop who has become less able to fulfil his office because of ill health or some other grave cause is earnestly requested to present his resignation from office. Bishop Finn seems to have been in good health, so the grave cause must have been that he had been convicted in September 2012 of failing to report to the police one of his priests, Fr Ratigan, who had been producing child pornography....

Kieran Tapsell: The Seventh Pope to Require the Cover up of Child Sexual Abuse?

In 2010, Fr Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, announced that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith would instruct bishops to report allegations of clergy sexual abuse of children where there was a local civil law requiring it. The terms of the dispensation were limited, so that if there were no reporting laws, the pontifical secret applied, and prevented any reporting of such allegations. The President of the Italian Catholic Bishops Conference, Cardinal Bagnasco, announced in 2012 and 2014 that Italian bishops would not report allegations of clergy sexual abuse to the police on the ground that Italian law...

Kieran Tapsell. Two reports from the Child Sexual Abuse Royal Commission.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse published two reports on 19 December 2014. The first related to Case No. 11 dealing with four institutions run by the Christian Brothers Congregation in Western Australia from the 1920s until the 1980s for wards of the State, child migrants and children sent there privately. It made findings about the poor treatment and education of the boys, the many instances of sexual abuse by 16 named Christian brothers and 2 priests, the lack of supervision by the leaders of the Christian Brothers and by the State, the failure to report...

Kieran Tapsell: More Cracks in the Church Dyke?

In December 2013, I wrote a piece for this blog entitled, Cracks in the Church Dyke at the Royal Commission, which posed the question: the real issue now is whether the Truth, Justice and Healing Council, (TJHC), representing the Church at the Royal Commission, will come clean over canon law, or the dyke will be opened by a thousand cuts: https://publish.pearlsandirritations.com/blog/?p=1015. The dyke I was referring to was that erected by Pope Benedict XVI in his Pastoral Letter to the Irish people of March 2010, where he ignored the criticisms of canon law by the Murphy Commission in Ireland and...

Kieran Tapsell: The Holy See, Torture and the UN

On 26 September 2014, the Holy See rejected the demand of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child for it to impose through canon law mandatory reporting of all allegations of child sexual abuse by clergy. The Holy See said its only responsibility under the Convention was for the handful of children who reside within the 44 hectares of the Vatican City. This is despite the fact that since 2001, it supervised or conducted disciplinary hearings against 4,000 clerics accused of child sexual abuse which had no connection whatsoever with the Vatican City. The Holy See further...

Kieran Tapsell: The Catholic Cafeteria

On 29 July 2011, Cardinal George Pell gave a speech in which he accused many Catholics of being Cafeteria Catholics, by picking and choosing from the doctrinal menu. Having moved to Rome, he is now attending the Synod of Catholic Chefs de Cuisine to decide what is wrong with the menu at the Catholic Cafeteria, particularly when it comes to the Family Meal. There is an argument for taking some of the old recipes off the menu, like Haggis Humanae Vitae, because no one buys it anymore, and for relaxing the dress rules to allow divorced and same sex...

Kieran Tapsell: The Holy Sees Newly Found Sensitivity to National Sovereignty

In January 2014 the United Nations Committee for the Rights of the Child criticized the Holy See for the secrecy imposed by canon law over allegations of sexual crimes against children by clergy. It demanded mandatory reporting to the civil authorities in all cases, and not just where there were civil laws requiring reporting. On 22 May 2014, the Committee against Torture repeated that demand. The Holy Sees response of 26 September 2014 criticized the Committee for overlooking the distinctions between the Holy See, the Vatican City State and the universal Catholic Church, stating that in signing the Convention...

Kieran Tapsell: Lawyers under the Spotlight at the Royal Commission

The John Ellis Case Study (No 8) at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse concerned the experience of John Ellis with the Towards Healing protocol in dealing with his complaint about being sexually abused by Fr Aidan Duggan. The case was unusual for its revelations about the relationship between Cardinal Pell as head of the Archdiocese of Sydney and his lawyers, Corrs, Chambers Westgarth, its senior partner Paul McCann and his assistant, John Dalzell. Such communications rarely come to light even in Royal Commissions because the Royal Commissions Act 1902 respects legal professional privilege where it...

Kieran Tapsell. George Pell's logic on child sex abuse is flawed

In his video appearance before the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on 21 August 2014, the former Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, insisted that the Catholic Church should be treated like every other organisation in society. It should not be held responsible for the crimes of its priests in the same way as the ownership or leadership of a trucking company is not responsible if one of its drivers picks up a hitchhiker and molests her. Pell conceded that if in fact the authority figure has been remiss through bad preparation, bad procedures or...

Kieran Tapsell: The Royal Commission on the Melbourne Response

Next Monday, 18 August, 2014, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse will commence Case Study No. 16 on the Melbourne Response that operated within the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne. In 1994, Bishop Geoffrey Robinson had been appointed by the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference to draw up a protocol for dealing with sex abuse of children by priests. The outcome was Towards Healing that was approved in November 1996 by all the Australian bishops except Archbishop Pell. Just one month before, in October 1996, Archbishop Pell set up his Melbourne Response. In an extended interview...

Kieran Tapsell. Rolf Harris and the Vatican.

Rolf Harris, aged 84, was found guilty of sexual assaults on children in the long distant past, and was sentenced to 5 years jail. The judge took into account his age in determining the sentence. Many people still thought it was inadequate, and there is talk of an appeal by the Attorney General to increase the term. The policy widely accepted in society and reflected by the courts is that the sexual abuse of children should be punished severely, even if it occurred a long time ago, and the convicted man is in his eighties. That view seems to have...

Kieran Tapsell: The Nestor Case

The Catholic Church hierarchy has now accepted that its attempts to cover up the sexual abuse of children by clergy facilitated further abuse. But there was a second reason for the increase in the abuse the canonical disciplinary system was dysfunctional. It was dysfunctional enough prior to 1983, but Pope St. John Paul II made it useless with his 1983 Code of Canon Law. It became virtually impossible to dismiss these priests under the Code. They remained priests, and took advantage of their positions of power and authority to continue their assaults on children. But if you read the...

Kieran Tapsell. Canon Law and the Truth, Justice and Healing Council.

In his more than 40 blogs posted on the Truth Justice and Healing Councils web site, Francis Sullivan, its CEO, has never, until last week, mentioned any difficulties that canon law might have posed for bishops in reporting sexual abuse by clergy to the police or in dismissing them through the Churchs own internal disciplinary systems. In his blog of 4 June 2014, Francis Sullivan wrote: Earlier in the week I went to the launch of Kieran Tapsells new book Potiphars Wife: The Vaticans Secret and Child Sexual Abuse. This highly controversial book argues that the cover-up of child...

Kieran Tapsell. The Cunneen Reports Comments on Canon and Civil Law

On 30 May 2014, the Report of the Special Commission of Inquiry into Matters relating to the Police Investigation of Certain Child Sexual Abuse Allegations in the Catholic Diocese of MaitlandNewcastle (Cunneen Report) was published by the New South Wales Government. The Report rejected allegations by former Detective Inspector Fox that there was an attempt by the NSW Police not to properly investigate cases of the sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy. But the Report severely criticized the Church in the Maitland-Newcastle diocese for covering up those allegations over a long period of time. When it came to...

Kieran Tapsell. The Vatican at the UN: Who is fossilised in the Past?

The Holy See has found itself before the United Nations once again, this time in relation to the Treaty on Torture. According to Reuters, Archbishop Tomasi told critics of its sexual abuse record that it had developed model child protection policies over the last decade and that its accusers should not stay fossilised in the past when attitudes were different. He said that the culture of the time in the 1960s and 1970s viewed such offenders as people who could be treated psychologically rather than as criminals, but this was a mistake, and it is all in the past. This...

Kieran Tapsell's "Potiphar's Wife"

In this book by Kieran Tapsell which is to be launched on May 27 we can learn about canon law and secrecy in the Vatican, particularly in relation to sexual abuse. Kieran Tapsell has been a guest blogger on these issues on this site.John Menadue For 1500 years, the Catholic Church accepted that clergy who sexually abused children deserved to be stripped of their status as priests and then imprisoned. A series of papal and Council decrees from the twelfth century required such priests to be dismissed from the priesthood, and then handed over to the civil authorities for...

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