Cambridge academic John Cornwell made this call after the Church of England announced it would look at whether abuse admitted in the confessional should stay confidential.

Dr Cornwell, who has written a book on Confession and is a contributor to The Tablet, acknowledged that withholding absolution could dissuade abusers from seeking the sacrament at all.

But he said that withholding absolution might also bring to an end cycles of abuse and absolution.

Dr Cornwell was sexually propositioned by a priest during Confession as a child.

Last week, he told The Times: "Catholic priest abusers appeared to use Confession routinely to square their pastoral and offending lives."

"In one court case in Australia a priest admitted to confessing his abuse 1400 times," he reportedly said.

An investigation by The Times exposed a leading Anglican priest, Rev. Robert Waddington, as a serial sexual abuser of children in England and Australia for more than 50 years.

An inquiry showed the Church of England failed to act adequately to stop the abuse.

The Anglican Archbishop of York, Rev. John Sentamu said that "what happened was shameful, terrible, bad, bad, bad".

Archbishop Sentamu said that one of those who reported abuse to the inquiry believes that disclosures made in the confessional should not be confidential.

The archbishop said he had sympathy with this view and announced that the Church has commissioned theological and legal work on the question.

Rev. Waddington, who died in 2007, was head of education for the Church of England.

He was also a dean of Manchester Cathedral and governor of a music school where he was alleged to be responsible for mass abuse against children.

In July, Anglicans in Australia backed a change to the conventional confidentiality of the confessional in cases of serious crimes.

Sources

• The Tablet
• Huffington Post
• Image: Catholic Exchange

"If the priest knows beforehand about such a situation, the priest should refuse to hear the confession, that would be my advice. I would never hear the confession of a priest who was suspected of such a thing," he said.

Cardinal Pell was speaking following Prime Minister Julia Gillard's announcement of a wide-ranging royal commission into sexual abuse.

Australia's Catholic bishops welcomed the announcement but said "talk of a systemic problem of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church is ill-founded and inconsistent with the facts".

The bishops' conference said much of the public discussion had been about how cases were dealt with 20 or more years ago, but the Church had taken decisive steps since then to make child safety a priority and to help victims of abuse.

Cardinal Pell also welcomed the royal commission. "We think it's an opportunity to help the victims, it's an opportunity to clear the air, to separate fact from fiction," he said.

But he accused the press of a "persistent campaign" against the Catholic Church and said he hoped the royal commission would stop this "smear campaign" against the Church.

"We are not interested in denying the extent of misdoing in the Catholic Church," he told reporters. "We object to it being exaggerated. We object to being described as the only cab on the rank."

In Newcastle, the northern New South Wales diocese that has allegedly experienced some of the worst child sexual abuse and paid at least $NZ19 million in compensation, Bishop Bill Wright said it was possible a paedophile ring existed among its clergy in the 1970s and 80s.

"One priest who was abusing someone was in a parish next to another priest who turned out to be an abuser. Or one known abuser contributing funds to the defence of another known abuser," Bishop Wright said.

"We've not exactly been able to join those dots. What we haven't got is evidence of them passing victims around, what you would call a ring. It's possible."

Sources:

Catholic Church in Australia

The Age

ABC News

Reuters

Image: Herald Sun