The Pope may be backsliding on his crackdown on paedophile priests as Vatican bureaucrats are doing all they can to undermine reform efforts, a senior Australian Catholic official has warned. Francis Sullivan who leads the Australian church’s response to a four-year investigation into child abuse, says the Church in Australia could end up as a “marginalised rump” unless there is real change to an institutional culture hell-bent on self-protection and self-preservation. “You have to seriously wonder whether this isn’t the Pope backsliding on what has been a strong and determined crackdown on offending priests and the circumstances that allowed abuse to take place,” Sullivan said. The Independent reports: Francis Sullivan, who is in charge of the Catholic Church’s Truth, Justice and Healing Council, said he feared the Vatican’s “bureaucrats and courtiers [were] doing all they can to either undermine the Pope or driving an agenda” of protecting the institution, according to Australian Associated Press (AAP). In 2014 the Pope ordered a “zero-tolerance” stance on members of the clergy who abused children. Before that the church had been criticised by the UN for the frequency with which allegedly abusive priests were moved to different areas rather than turned over to police. Mr Sullivan also pointed to [...]