CARDINAL GEORGE PELL IN COURT
Shockwaves reverberated around the world when the news came that Cardinal George Pell would be charged with historical sex
abuse offences. The 76-year-old is Australia’s most illustrious priest and the most senior Catholic in the world to face such charges. In recent years, he’s been working at the Vatican advising Pope Francis on finance and governance.
Cardinal Pell was granted leave by the Pope and returned to Australia to defend himself on July 10. He denies all charges. He made a brief appearance in the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on July 26 and the matter was adjourned to October 6. No information was released on the nature of the charges.
Cardinal Pell studied in Rome and at Oxford and Monash universities. He has served as Archbishop of Sydney and Archbishop of Melbourne. Upon becoming Archbishop of Melbourne, he set up the Melbourne Response to investigate and deal with complaints of sexual abuse in the Archdiocese, the first of its kind in the world. Yet it was criticised for capping ex gratia payments to victims at $50,000, much less than the courts would have awarded, and its vigorous defence of lawsuits against the Church.
Cardinal Pell was called three times to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which examined the Melbourne Response protocol, the handling of abuse in the Melbourne Archdiocese and the Ballarat Diocese, where he had been a junior priest, and the unsuccessful lawsuit a former altar boy, John Ellis, had brought against the Sydney Archdiocese.
Protection of children, Cardinal Pell told the Commission, wasn’t “discussed enormously at all”. The “instinct was more to protect the institution, the community of the Church from shame.”
In 2015, a heart condition prevented him from travelling from Rome for the Royal Commission. In 2016, he testified by video link from Rome, earning anger and derision from some quarters for not returning in person.