Wearyingly long search for cardinal sins
THE people who arrived at 6am outside Melbourne Magistrates Court to ensure a seat for the six- minute procedural session of Australia’s most notorious cardinal will now have to come back in early October.
Cardinal Pell previously complained when he was questioned at the Vatican that he was being tried by the media.
In a climate where every other comment is sub judice, it would appear he has been punished by the media.
Headlines and cartoon captions have contained every variation of hell/ Pell/ bell puns. My favourite was the allusion to the 17th century clergyman John Donne in his sermon, “For whom the Pell tolls ...”
It will be interesting to see what information can be disseminated in the interim.
Some months ago, one of the regular panellists on The Outsiders had been advised by lawyers he wasn’t able to say much about the man he had written a book about. Louise Milligan’s biography Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of George Pell has been withdrawn from sale as a lead up to the committal mention.
It is ironic Cardinal Pell previously told the Royal Commission into Institutional Response to Child Sexual Abuse, that victims’ “legal abuse” should be changed.
In the future, victims of clerical molestation should be able to take legal action.
Now two former students of St Alipius Ballarat claim they were inappropriately touched by Pell in the swimming pool in the late ’ 70s. Pell’s memory was bad during his evidence to the royal commission, so this probably won’t be a Eureka moment.
There have been even more famous cardinals. The Richard Chamberlain character in Colleen McCullough’s The Thorn Birds, for instance, was an Australian cardinal with a secret past who made it to the Vatican.
Shakespeare’s character of Henry VIII’s Lord Chancellor Cardinal Wolsey, executed for high treason, has been revisited in The Tudors TV series.
The media, no doubt, will cover the long drawn out trial of Cardinal Pell ad nauseam, before we discover if the sins of the Cardinal are cardinal sins. WILLIAM ROSS,
Cranbrook.