 
Catholic sexual abuse cases in Australia, like Catholic Church sexual abuse cases elsewhere, have involved convictions, trials and ongoing investigations into allegations of sex crimes committed by Catholic priests, members of religious orders and other personnel which have come to light in recent decades, along with the growing awareness of sexual abuse within other religious and secular institutions.
Criticisms of the church have centred both on the nature and extent of abuse, and on historical and contemporary management of allegations by church officials. Internally, the church began updating its protocols in the 1990s, and papal apologies for abuse in Australia were made by Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. A number of government enquiries have also examined church practices—most notably the 2015–17 Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. The royal commission established that some 4,444 claimants alleged incidents of child sexual abuse in 4,756 reported claims to Catholic Church authorities (some claimants made a claim of child sexual abuse against more than one Catholic Church authority) and at least 1,880 suspected abusers from 1980 to 2015. Most of those suspected of abuse were Catholic priests and religious brothers and 62% of the survivors who told the commission they were abused in religious institutions were abused in a Catholic facility.
Australia's Catholic leaders had been among the first in the world to publicly address management of child abuse: In 1996, the church issued a document, "Towards Healing", which it described as seeking to "establish a compassionate and just system for dealing with complaints of abuse". Inquiries have since established that historically, church officials had often failed to prevent future abuse by clergy who had come to their attention by transferring clergy and religious to new parishes or dioceses and not stripping them of their religious status. A widely reported 2012 claim in a Victorian police report that 43 suicide deaths were directly related to abuse by clergy spurred the formation of a Victorian state Parliamentary Inquiry into the Handling of Child Abuse by Religious and other Organisations. In October 2012, the Chief Commissioner of Victoria Police, Ken Lay, in a submission to a parliamentary inquiry on the issue, recommended that some of the church's actions to hinder investigations (including dissuading victims from reporting to police, failing to engage with police and alerting suspects of allegations against them) be criminalised.
The Gillard government called a wide-ranging royal commission in 2013 to examine religious and non-religious institutions and their responses to child abuse allegations. Archbishop Denis Hart, president of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, said he welcomed the royal commission, as did the Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, who said that he hoped it would help victims and stop a "smear campaign" against the church. Pell was himself later convicted of child sex offences, but was acquitted by the High Court of Australia on 7 April 2020.
The Bishops Conference established a national co-ordinating body, called the Truth, Justice and Healing Council, to oversee the church's engagement with the royal commission and the pastoral and other ramifications that arose from the sexual abuse scandal.
Of the 201 Catholic Church authorities surveyed by the royal commission, 92 (46%) reported having received at least one claim of child sexual abuse. Overall, some 4,444 claimants alleged incidents of abuse in 4,756 reported claims over the period 1950–2015 (86% of claims related to pre-1990 incidents). The 3,057 claims resulting in a payment for redress amounted to $268 million between 1980 and 2015. Alleged perpetrators were overwhelmingly male (90%) and religious brothers were disproportionally highly responsible (having the most claimants and some 37% of all alleged perpetrators, despite being numerically inferior to priests and religious sisters). By means of a weighted index, the commission found that at 75 archdioceses/dioceses and religious institutes with priest members examined, some 7% of priests (who worked in Australia between 1950 and 2009) were alleged perpetrators (this finding did not represent allegations tested in a court of law). Senior Counsel Gail Furness told the commission that "Children were ignored or worse, punished. Allegations were not investigated. Priests and religious leaders were moved. The parishes or communities to which they were moved knew nothing of their past. Documents were not kept or they were destroyed." By August 2011, according to Broken Rites, a support and advocacy group for church-related sex abuse victims, there had been over 100 cases in Australia where Catholic priests had been charged for sex offences against minors, as well as others involving non-custodial sentences and inconclusive proceedings.
On 3 June 2019, 18 months after being ordered to do so by the country's Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse, the Australian Catholic Church published its National Catholic Safeguarding Standards. The standards closely parallel the commission's recommendations as well as norms enshrined by the government in the National Principles for Child Safe Organizations, although some provisions were watered down. One notable alteration concerned the number of hours per year that people should be undergoing professional and pastoral supervision, which was reduced from the recommended 12 hours to six hours.
On 7 May 2020, newly released portions of the Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse's report stated that Pell knew about sex abuse in the church as early as 1973. On 8 May 2020, the Australian Supreme Court established an Institutional Liability List to administer child sex abuse lawsuits The list includes claims for damages arising from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. The royal commission's allegations against George Pell and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Ballarat played a role in the creation of the list.
In September 2020, the Australian state of Queensland passed legislation which makes it so that religious institutions, such as the Catholic Church, and their members are no longer able to use the sanctity of confession as a defence against failing to report material information about the sexual abuse of children. Under the new Queensland law, clergy who refuse to report confessions of sex abuse will face a maximum sentence of three years in prison.
Cases.
Archdiocese of Adelaide.
On 13 September 2011, Senator Nick Xenophon used parliamentary privilege to name an Adelaide priest as the alleged perpetrator of six sexual assaults on John Hepworth about 50 years earlier. Senator Xenophon alleged that the vicar-general of the Adelaide archdiocese, Monsignor David Cappo, had been provided with detailed allegations in 2008 but had failed to act upon them, the investigations still being "at a preliminary stage" and the priest concerned not being stood down during the investigation. Monsignor Cappo subsequently resigned from several governmental positions. The Catholic Church established a formal independent inquiry, conducted by Michael Abbott, , found that there was no substance to the allegations.
Father Albert Davis (d. 2007), a member of the Dominican order, was charged in 2006 with 17 incidents of indecent assault involving seven boys at Blackfriars Priory School between 1956 and 1960. Davis was committed to stand trial in the Adelaide District Court, but he died before proceedings were commenced.
Father Charles Barnett pleaded guilty in 2009 (after extradition from Indonesia) to three child sex charges for events between 1977 and 1985 at Crystal Brook and Port Pirie.
Archdiocese of Sydney.
In 2007, Ross Murrin, 52, a former Sydney Catholic school teacher and Marist Brother, accused of indecently assaulting eight male Year 5 students at a Daceyville school in south-east Sydney in 1974, pleaded guilty to some of the 21 charges.
In 2016, Fr Roger Flaherty received a sentence of two years and two weeks in prison five months after pleading guilty to molesting three altar boys in the 1970s and 1980s. However, Flaherty's advanced age and poor health allowed him to be eligible for parole six months into his sentence. Former Sydney archbishop Cardinal James Freeman and auxiliary bishop Edward Kelly were accused of shielding Flaherty from prosecution when the acts of sex abuse were committed.
In 2017, Fr Denis Chrysostom Alexander was arrested in Sydney and faces an extradition to Scotland for sexual and physical abuse he reportedly committed at the former Fort Augustus Abbey in the 1970s. The sex abuse investigation against Alexander also resulted in the Archdiocese of Sydney stripping him being of his priestly faculties in Australia by 2013 as well.
In 2018, the Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, was convicted of child sex offences, but was acquitted by the High Court of Australia in 2020.
In April 2019, Fr Anthony Caruana was arrested and charged with sexually abusing five minors, including one male minor, between the years 1982 and 1988 when he was a dormitory manager, rugby coach and band teacher at Chevalier College.
In November 2020, Theo Overberg, the secretary for the Jesuit Conference Asia-Pacific at the Jesuit Curia in Rome, and Laurence Leonard, who recently served as spiritual director at the Corpus Christi seminary in Melbourne, have each been charged with indecently assaulting three boys during the 1970s at Sydney's Saint Ignatius' College Riverview.
Marist Brothers.
In February 2020, convicted Marist Brother William Wade, who served as principal of five Australian Marist Brother-run high schools, pleaded guilty to also concealing the abuse from authorities.
Diocese of Armidale.
This diocese incorporates 25 parishes and 24 schools within about 90,000 km2 and is one of, if not the highest density locations of Catholic child sexual abuse in Australia on a per capita basis. The extraordinary and shocking story of 'Father F', later to be identified as former Armidale local, and former Catholic Priest John Joseph Farrell, was central to the ABC Television program "Four Corners" expose "Unholy Silence". This was first broadcast on Monday 2 July 2012 and was potentially the final trigger that led to the then prime minister, Julia Gillard, announcing the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. The reaction of Armidale locals to the program was strong and one of indignation that something should have been done sooner by the Catholic Church. Case Study 44 of the Royal Commission (Held Monday 19 to Thursday 22 September 2016) focused specifically on this case of a former Catholic priest abusing children over a 20-year period and the alleged cover-up by the church hierarchy including Father Bernard Flood, Father Richard Gleeson, Monsignor Wayne Peters (dec), Father Brian Lucas, Monsignor John Usher, Bishop Gerard Hanna (ret), Bishop Bede Heather (ret), Bishop Luc Matthys (most of whom gave evidence to the Royal Commission) and even Australia's most senior Catholic, Cardinal George Pell.
On 1 November 2019, former Diocese of Armidale priest David Perrett pleaded not guilty to 139 charges of child sexual assault at a number of locations, including Armidale, Guyra, Walgett, Moree, Penrith, Bundarra, Lower Creek and Sawtell between the 1960s and 1990s. Perrett, aged 82, had been arrested for these charges and was denied bail in August 2018, but was later granted bail in April 2019 after he was told he had only six months to a year to live. In February 2020, it was ruled that Perrett would stand trial starting 18 January 2021. However, Perrett died while awaiting trial.
Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle.
The diocese has been referred to as the "epicentre of Catholic clerical sexual abuse in Australia" due to a number of paedophile priests with extensive abuse records being jailed since 1997, a dedicated clergy abuse police strikeforce (Strike Force Lantle) having laid more than 170 abuse charges. Convicted abusers include Father Vincent Ryan (a $6 million compensation payout to victims, setting a record for the Catholic Church in Australia), Father David O'Hearn (serving a 23-year sentence) and Father James Fletcher (died in jail in 2006).
John Sidney Denham pleaded guilty to 29 child sex charges involving 27 boys under his care while a priest in Newcastle in the 1970s. It was alleged that the Archbishop of Adelaide, Philip Wilson, knew about clerical sexual abuse when serving in the New South Wales' diocese of Maitland-Newcastle in the late 1970s and 1980s. On 27 July 2012, John Pirona was found dead in his car five days after leaving a letter ending "too much pain", this referring to his abuse by a paedophile priest in 1979 when Pirona was 12, the event occurring a year after Maitland-Newcastle bishop Leo Clarke was informed that the priest was a sex offender.
On 31 July 2012, NSW Police in Strike Force Lantle announced they would be providing prosecutors with evidence that Father Brian Lucas, general secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, Archbishop Wilson of Adelaide and Michael Malone, retired