In a message for the feast of St Joseph the Worker, Bishop Vincent Long OFM Conv has called for the Church’s workplaces to be “characterised by respect and freedom, by mutual esteem and kindness”.
Each year, the Bishops Commission for Social Justice, Mission and Service releases a message for the feast day, which falls on May 1.
Bishop Long, the chair of the Bishops Commission, delivered this year’s message for the feast in a video with Claire Moore, a member of the Archdiocese of Brisbane’s Justice and Peace Commission.
The message addresses the prevalence of sexual harassment in the workplace, mindful that the Catholic Church employs more than 220,000 people in Australia.
“The Church needs to play its part in addressing the problem of sexual harassment within its own workforce,” the message says.
“We are one of Australia’s largest employers with workers in schools, hospitals, aged care facilities and many agencies. Sadly, sexual harassment is a reality within Catholic workplaces too.”
The message calls for the Church to back new laws resulting from the 2020 Respect@Work report, which examined sexual harassment across Australian work settings and made dozens of recommendations to the Commonwealth.
“We in the Church need to not only comply with the law’s new requirements, but we must embrace them with enthusiasm and commitment,” Bishop Long says.
“If we are to be faithful to the teaching of Christ, we need to do everything we can to ensure that Catholic workplaces are characterised by respect and freedom, by mutual esteem and kindness, not by coercion, control and domination.”
Ms Moore, who serves as chair of a community legal centre in Queensland that supports women in employment, said in the video message that “safe workplaces, free from sexual harassment, are achievable”.
“All of us need to play our part in stamping out this unacceptable workplace behaviour,” she said.
“We need to put an end to the devastation it has caused in the lives of so many.”