FOR WHOM THE PELL TOLLS

Some people will say what terrible timing. Others will say what exquisite timing. The Pope is coming to Australia for World Youth Day next week. His host will be Australia’s highest-ranking Catholic, Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney.

There are high hopes that Pope Benedict will address the issue of sexual assaults on children by Catholic priests and even apologise to those victims on behalf of the Church.

The way he did recently in the United States when he personally met with some of those molested children.

Cardinal Pell has said ‘The Pope handled the issue well in the United States. I hope and pray and anticipate that he will handle the issue appropriately here’.

Let’s hope and pray and anticipate that the Pontiff handles the scandalous issue better than Cardinal Pell has himself in the past.

Last night on the ABC Lateline  documents showed that Pell had concealed details of a priest’s history of sexual abuse from a victim seeking justice.

To be blunt and unchristian the Archbishop lied.

He wrote to the victim, Anthony Jones, on February 14, 2003, saying that his complaint of sexual assaults by Father Terence  Goodall could not be substantiated because no other victims had come forward and that Goodall ‘categorically denies the accusation’.

In fact another man had complained about being assaulted by Goodall when he was nine years old and a church investigator had advised Pell that the complaints by both men should be upheld and that Goodall had admitted the offences. Pell had written to the other victim accepting that he had been attacked by the priest.

In 2005 Goodall was convicted of sexually assaulting Anthony Jones.

Archbishop Pell has serious cover-up questions to answer here. And some of his earlier actions and statements should come back to haunt him.
There were allegations of sex abuse made against him personally. He stood down and he was later exonerated by a Church inquiry.

George Pell shared a house with notorious convicted paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale in his younger years and, as a show of support, ostentatiously turned up at his side, in full regalia, during his first court appearance years later. Ridsdale was one of the worst serial molesters in history.

And also don’t forget Archbishop Pell once said  ‘abortion is a worse moral scandal than priests sexually abusing young people.’

Think of that when he is sharing the limelight, in all his glory, with the Pope, next week.

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2008