The church, on Tuesday, made a submission to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which called for a new independent statutory body to investigate and compensate abuse claims. This would replace the Catholic schemes operated through the Towards Healing process and the Melbourne Response and deal with abuse by other institutions.

The Royal Commission will begin a two-week sitting in Melbourne on Monday. The commission had asked institutions to provide proposals on how cases could be investigated and compensated.

The federal government would operate the new independent body but institutions responsible for the abuse would pay for it, Francis Sullivan, chairman of the church's Truth Justice and Healing Council, said.

''We don't think that the Catholic Church should be investigating abuse cases about itself,'' Mr Sullivan said.

''We think there should be a completely independent process from the church.''

While other Catholic dioceses had uncapped schemes, the Melbourne Response has been widely criticised for being capped and Mr Sullivan has previously said any new scheme should be uncapped and said policy backflip was ''regrettable''. Mr Sullivan said government-run institutions would be included in the scheme and Australian governments did not sign-up for uncapped schemes.

''We have seen this at state level, they do not provide uncapped redress schemes,'' Mr Sullivan said.

''That is, unfortunately, the real-politik and that is what we have had to come to terms with. There is no question that our initial position has changed.''

Monetary redress would be capped, indexed and in line with ''community standards''. Other supports, like housing, counselling and employment assistance, would be unlimited.

Anthony Foster, father of two girls raped by a Catholic priest, was angered by the policy change.

''What we have is a situation of untold harm to victims ... and they want a capped system. Because of this untold harm we need an uncapped system to restore victims, it is the only that this is going to work,'' Mr Foster told the ABC's Jon Faine show.

Angela Sdrinis, who has represented many victims, criticised the cap.

"I think it is important that there is no cap in a redress scheme because this puts an arbitrary value on the suffering of victims which at the outset has the capacity to make a victim feel that their suffering is tested on a scale with the worst cases getting the maximum and anyone else’s suffering being in some way minimised or discounted," Ms Sdrinis said.