charged.

The law should exclude any existing excuse or privilege relating to a religious confessional, it said.

The Vatican didn't respond to the specific recommendations in a statement Friday, though Catholic officials have previously rejected any link between celibacy and abuse and have reaffirmed the sanctity of the confessional.

In the statement, the Vatican said the commission's report was "thorough," and deserved to be "studied seriously." And it said it was committed to helping the Australian church accompany victims in finding healing and justice.

Pope Francis's former finance minister, Cardinal George Pell, testified in a video link from the Vatican in 2016 about his time as a priest and bishop in Australia. Pell this year became the most senior Catholic official to face sex offence charges.

Through his lawyers, Pell has vowed tofight the charges of sexual assault.

The commission found that the church's responses to complaints and concerns about clerics in Australia were "remarkably and disturbingly similar."

The president of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, Archbishop Denis Hart, said many of the commission's recommendations "would have significant impact on the way the Catholic Church and others operate in Australia."

He said the Vatican is already giving "serious consideration" to questions raised by the commission about the extent of the seal of the confession and whether child molesters who did not confess to police could be absolved.

"I cannot break the seal. The penalty for any priest breaking the seal is excommunication; being passed out of the church," Hart said. "I revere the law of the land and I trust it, but this is