[caption id="attachment_874" align="alignleft" width="200"] Archbishop of Sidney Most Rev. Anthony Fisher[/caption]

Recently senior Church leaders in Australia have committed themselves to not using the so-called Ellis Defence anymore (click here).

The Ellis Defence is based on a ruling of the high court of Australia [2007] which found that the Catholic Church, as a whole, cannot be held legally (and thus financially) responsible for the actions of its priests who sexually abused children, because it is not incorporated as a single entity and there is no legal requirement for the church to do so. Put simply, when a Catholic priest commits sexual abuse, it does not happen in the "Catholic Church" because there is no such legal entity. It happens, instead, in one of the thousands of unincorporated parts of the church. Consequently, responsibility rests completely on members of that small part of the church, especially the perpetrator and those responsible for appointing or supervising him/her. Legal and financial responsibility for sexual abuse is completely limited to the parish, school, hospital or whatever is the unincorporated part in which it occurred.