is reflected in the tight knit, all male, impenetrable club that is the clergy.

Church business - and especially church wealth and its use - is nobody else’s.

"They all go through the same training," says Neil Ormerod, a one-time teacher of priests. "There’s a real camaraderie. You rarely see a priest break ranks and display anger at abuser priests."

This culture is reinforced by the fact that the church has its own law - canon law - and as the royal commission found, when canon and civil law come into conflict within the church, canon law prevails.

Among the many orders made by the Vatican under canon law is Secreta Continere, issued under Pope Paul VI in 1974. Otherwise known as the Pontifical Secret, it imposes a permanent silence on clergyon a range of matters, including child sexual abuse by priests.

Belatedly in 2010, 14 years after the church established its Toward Healing and Melbourne Response redress schemes, Pope Benedict XVI permitted that, in states where civil law specifically required the reporting of abuse, the church would abide by it. In Australia, only NSW and Victoria specifically require such reporting.

Peter Johnstone is a life-long church goer, former CEO and senior government manager at federal, state and local levels. He is now a consultant specialising in governance.

He says the clericalist culture and Pontifical Secret contributed to the “most dysfunctional governance’’ he has ever seen.

This lack of accountability and transparency resulted in church officials protecting paedophiles. Peter Johnstone, life-long church goer

And it leaves big questions over financial priorities.

It’s a culture evident