Our Common Mission and Integrity in Our Common Mission

In response to the final report of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Recommendation 16.49 – Codes of conduct in religious institutions should explicitly and equally apply to people in religious ministry and to lay people, and in continuance of those initiatives already in place to guide the variety of pastoral ministries in the Church, Integrity in Our Common Mission has been developed as the primary code of conduct for clergy, religious and laity.

The principles in Integrity in Our Common Mission have been developed to guide, form, strengthen and affirm those behaviours which are expected of all engaged in the ministries of the Church: in parish and sacramental life, education, health and community services, pastoral care, social welfare support and the variety of other ministries to which people of faith are called. Integrity in our Common Mission is a National Code of Conduct for those exercising pastoral ministry in the dioceses of the Catholic Church in Australia: bishops, priests, deacons, seminarians, religious and lay men and lay women who are exercising a pastoral ministry in the name of the diocese, its parishes and agencies. This pastoral ministry may be by appointment or may be exercised in a voluntary capacity.