Melbourne Archbishop Admits Culture of Secrecy and Cover up in Catholic Church

Two months in his papacy, Pope Francis last week ordered resigned gay Scottish Cardinal Keith Patrick O'Brien for several months to do penance and prayer, while the Melbourne Archdiocese acknowledged on Monday that it took 18 years to remove a convicted paedophile priest from his parish.

While expressing remorse for the delayed action, Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart admitted before a Victorian parliamentary inquiry into child abuse by clergy that the Roman Catholic Church's culture of secrecy and cover up is to blame for the situation.

Archbishop Hart explained that the church was too slow to realise the wrong that was happening because the priests involved happen to be cunning and devious criminals.

"I would say we did what we could, I wish it had been earlier," The Age quoted the archbishop who was referring to Desmond Gannon, convicted of child sex abuse in 1993 but was removed from the priesthood only in 2011.

Fr Gannon was convicted and jailed in 2009 for several child abuse offences he committed from 1957 to 1979 and was even identified by then Melbourne Archbishop George Pell in 1998 as a high-risk priest.

During Fr Gannon's conviction and imprisonment in 2009 he was still a priest because it was only in 2011 that the Catholic Church in Victoria asked Vatican to defrock the convicted sex offender.

He added the Holy See has a very high standard of proof before defrocking priests and require absolute certitude what happened.

Although Archbishop Hart headed the Melbourne archdiocese only in 2001, he took responsibility for the delay in defrocking Fr Gannon.

"I apologise to the children who were the victims ... We failed to recognise that the abuse was occurring, we failed to recognise that we had paedophiles in our midst, we failed to really listen to people when they came forward to complain."