Vatican should make celibacy for Catholic priests voluntary, royal commission says

"The Vatican should make celibacy for priests voluntary, Australia’s royal commission into child sexual abuse has recommended in its final report.

"After five years of work, Australia’s royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse delivered its 21-volume report to government containing 400 recommendations – 189 of them new – to governments and organisations about how to prevent children being harmed on such a scale again."

(snip)

“In many religious institutions, the power afforded to people in religious ministry and the misplaced trust of parents combined with aspects of the institutional culture, practices and attitudes to create risks for children,” the report said.

“We heard that alleged perpetrators were often transferred to other locations but they were rarely reported to police. The failure to understand that the sexual abuse of a child was a crime with profound impacts for the victim, and not a mere moral failure capable of correction by contrition and penance (a view expressed in the past by a number of religious leaders) is almost incomprehensible.”

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/dec/15/royal-commission-final-report-australia-child-abuse