The following is an excerpt from The Bishop of Gippsland The Right Revd Dr Richard Treloar's homily during a Service of Lament and Contrition in response to the National Apology to Victims and Survivors of Institutional Child Sexual Abuse at St Paul's Anglican Cathedral, Sale on March 6, 2019

"Tonight we echo the National Apology made to victims and survivors of Institutional Child Sexual Abuse on 22 October last year by the Prime Minister. And we acknowledge the historic abuse that has taken place here in Gippsland within the orbit of responsibility of our own Anglican organisations.

We do so, quite intentionally, on Ash Wednesday: a day in the church calendar when we are called to penitence, and recognition of our finitude and our frailty – both as individuals, and as the body of Christ; an ever-wounded body, which even in the light of Easter Day bears the marks of betrayal, injustice, abondonment, the misuse of power, and violence, drawing us again to the foot of the cross to weep with Mary that something like that could happen to one so innocent, while we stood by.

What we are doing here must be of a piece with the spiritual work, the practice of our faith, to which we seek to bring ever greater integrity: integrity that is a function of a collective and soul-searching honesty; for the truth, and only the truth, will set us and others free.

Such was the premise of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa of the 1990s. No reconciliation without truth: the truthfulness, that is, of human stories, of lived human experience.

Contrition that is motivated by fear of judgment – the world’s or God’s – is not ‘perfect contrition’ in the language of sacramental confession. Woe to us; and shame on us; but not in that kind of ‘woe is me’ indulgent self-loathing that becomes yet another form of preoccupation with ourselves and the church as institution, rather than focussing on the vulnerable person, the child, the victim/survivor.

That kind of ‘imperfect contrition’ feeds back in to the structural brokenness which enabled such atrocities to happen in the first place, and is not the impetus for what we do here this this evening.

Let us rather be marked with ashes this Ash Wednesday for the sort of contrition that is motivated by respect for the injured, by care for the vulnerable, which – in this context – is survivor-focussed and trauma-informed, which includes the sort of repentance that leads to restitution and reparation, even if reconciliation must wait for the new creation.

Let us be marked for the redemptive work reflected in an unwavering commitment to child safety in our Anglican churches, schools and other organisations; reflected in a seismic cultural change driven not by compliance, or insurance, but by kingdom values, and a gospel-shaped worldview; reflected in a willingness to face into the clericalism, and the other systemic forces in our church which we have allowed to erode transparency and accountability, to substitute power for authority, and to diminish the ministry of all the baptised.

Tonight we confess – with a contrition which places the child at the centre, as Jesus did in our gospel reading [Matt 18:1-7] – our collective sin, our systemic complicity in creating the conditions in which such insidious (but no longer unspeakable) stumbling blocks could be placed before the vulnerable in our care, under our watch.

In that spirit, and with those assurances, I apologise to all who suffered abuse within the schools and parishes of the Anglican Diocese of Gippsland at the hands of those whom they trusted, and upon whose protection they relied. We have failed you. We are sorry for the harm done to you, and for the trauma you have experienced. We repent in dust and ashes; and, with you, by the grace and mercy of God, we seek a new way of being that may rise from those ashes."