Fr Denis Hart was speaking at a royal commission on child abuse in Australia.
He said: "I would see that people sometimes have a greater deal of sympathy for a church person than they should have, and they didn't sufficiently identify the crime that that person had committed for what it was
"I think these times have made us see quite clearly both in what we think and know but also in our action what we must do."
The archbishop also spoke about apology letters he had written to the victims of paedophile priests.
He admitted that most of them were exactly the same and all he had done was change the name: "They are very, very similar at least. Some of them may be identical," he said.
Fr Hart also said he "absolutely accepted" the problem of sex abuse in some parts of the church.
He said allegations senior Catholics thought abuse was a moral rather than criminal issue were not true.