Top cleric in sex abuse scandal
Catholic cardinal close to pope to appear in court
AUSTRALIA’S move to bring sexual assault charges against Cardinal George Pell is the latest chapter in a damaging saga of abuse that the Catholic church has struggled to draw a line under.
Pell has been ordered to appear before a Melbourne judge on July 18 to answer unspecified multiple counts arising from his country’s extensive inquiry into decades of abuse in institutions dealing with children.
The 76-year-old is the most senior cleric yet to be directly implicated in a multifaceted scandal that has plagued the church for decades, but has never come so close to its highest ranks.
As head of a powerful economic department, Pell is one of Pope Francis’s closest advisers, his point-man on cleaning up Vatican finances and the number three in the Holy See’s hierarchy.
As such he is a much higher-profile figure than Keith O’Brien, the former archbishop of Edinburgh who renounced his rights as a cardinal in 2015 after admitting misconduct in relation to alleged drunken sexual assaults on young priests.
Pell has admitted errors in managing abuse by priests under his authority, but denies any personal wrongdoing.
But regardless of its outcome, the impending court case seems likely to further tarnish the image of a global institution long accused of complacency over a cancer in its midst.
Francis came to office promising a zero-tolerance approach and an end to the kind of cover-ups portrayed in Spotlight, the Oscar-winning 2015 drama about how the Boston Globe uncovered wide-scale, unpunished abuse in the local diocese.
Critics say Francis’s record has been patchy at best, with his handling of some high-profile cases under scrutiny and attempts at institutional reform stalled by internal resistance.
Francis won praise in 2014 when he established an advisory panel on combating abuse that included two former victims.
But Ireland’s Marie Collins and Britain’s Peter Saunders have both since quit the commission.
Collins left in March, accusing Vatican officials of shameful blocking of reforms, months after Saunders said he felt betrayed by Francis and was sidelined.
The final straw for Collins came when officials in the Vatican Curia refused to guarantee that all letters from victims would receive a response, or cooperate with the commission on developing safeguarding guidelines.
Other panel members said that reformers had to be patient, describing change as a long-term education job.
The Vatican has since pledged to ensure complaints are responded to in the way Collins demanded and Vatican watcher Iacopo Scaramuzzi said two senior officials had been sidelined for obstruction. “It is not true to say the pope is doing nothing, but there is a lot to do and it is an issue the church has still to resolve,” he said.
Last year, Francis issued a decree intended to allow bishops to be removed from office if they failed to deal with abuse cases correctly.
However, the order was never passed down after being deemed surplus to requirements by the department in charge of implementing it. In the case of O’Brien, Francis was criticised for allowing him to keep his title of cardinal and failing to publish details of a church investigation.
Similar issues arose in the case of Mauro Inzoli, an Italian priest convicted in 2012 of sexually abusing minors.
Inzoli was finally defrocked last month.
Abuse survivors said Francis’s desire to display mercy to the likes of Inzoli betrayed a dangerous ambivalence about the nature of his actions.
“The pope needs to remember there is a difference between crime and sin,” Joelle Casteix, of the US survivor network SNAP, said. – AFP