Should bishops who failed to address child sexual abuse be forced to resign?

It might be Good Friday but that hasn’t stopped an Australian bishop from calling out his fellow bishops and asking them to resign.

Retired Roman Catholic Bishop Geoffrey Robinson said he is asking Pope Francis to request the resignation of every bishop who has failed to properly address cases of child sexual abuse in the church.

He also said this Easter there needed to be “death and resurrection” in the church this Easter to restore trust and credibility, reports the ABC.

“Every bishop who has ever been responsible for the abuse of a child, because he did not do what he should have done, should be asked to resign,” Bishop Robinson, said in an interview with ABC Radio religion specialist Noel Debien.

If every bishop who was privy to information about sexual abuse in the church was forced to resign, hundreds of bishops across the world would leave churches empty.

But it must be done, he said, as “the church has lost almost all credibility,” he said.

“It has got to be seen to be confronting anything and everything which has contributed”.

The former Bishop also said the church must “get rid of obligatory celibacy” and women should become more involved in every level of the church.

He said Catholic teaching on sexuality must be “looked at again from the beginning” — including homosexuality.

“They must look at gay people, and that concept of what’s natural,” he said.

Through his work in the Church, Bishop Robinson was one of the first to act on the Australian Catholic Church’s response to child sexual abuse by members of the clergy, as well as on the Bishops’ National Committee for Professional Standards.

So we want to know your thoughts today: Should bishops across the world resign and give the Church an overhaul? Or is it too late to change anything?