This is highly unusual—first, because the victim is a bishop; and secondly, because he says he suffered the abuse as an adult.
The Catholic bishop of Parramatta has gone public for the first time about the sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of clergy. Bishop Vincent Long Van Nguyen talked about the abuse at a royal commission hearing in Sydney and called on the church to consider removing priests’ honorifics and giving parishioners more power. “I was also a victim of sexual abuse by clergy when I first came to Australia, even though I was an adult,” the former refugee told the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse on Tuesday. “That had a powerful impact on me and how I want to … walk in the shoes of other victims and really endeavour to attain justice and dignity for them.” Long, the first Australian bishop of Vietnamese background, was applauded throughout his testimony. Child sexual abuse survivors and their loved ones approached him afterwards. Some cried as they spoke to him.
Searching for more information about the bisholp, I stumbled on this item, regarding his views on homosexuality:
The bishop of the Catholic diocese of Parramatta has called on the church to accept homosexuality, lamenting that the faith is not a “trailblazer” against inequality.
Bishop Vincent Long Van Nguyen has gone further than the Pope, who has said God loves and accepts gay people.
Bishop Long said it was not good enough to treat gay people with compassion and then define their lifestyle as “intrinsically disordered”. The comments, delivered in a speech in western Sydney last month, are likely to cause consternation in the church hierarchy, which is against same-sex marriage.
“We cannot talk about the integrity of creation, the universal and inclusive love of God, while at the same time colluding with the forces of oppression in the ill-treatment of racial minorities, women and homosexual persons,” Bishop Long said.
“It won’t wash with young people, especially when we purport to treat gay people with love and compassion and yet define their sexuality as ‘intrinsically disordered’. This is particularly true when the church has not been a shining beacon and a trailblazer in the fight against inequality and intolerance.”
The catechism, meantime, notes:
Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.”They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.
And today we celebrate...