Graffiti targets Pell amid abuse inquiry

By Megan Neil And Christopher Talbot
NT News
November 25, 2015

http://www.ntnews.com.au/news/national/catholic-building-defaced-in-melbourne/story-fnjbnvyj-1227621963321

Graffiti calling for Cardinal George Pell to be jailed has appeared on a building in Melbourne.

GEORGE Pell hung up the phone when a former Catholic school principal asked him to publicly back the man's attempts to deal with a bizarre pedophile priest, an inquiry has heard.

GRAEME Sleeman says he wrote to Cardinal Pell, then the Melbourne archbishop, about a decade after he resigned as principal of Doveton's Holy Family Primary School in 1986 in frustration that nothing was done about parish priest Peter Searson.
Mr Sleeman was unable to get another job as principal of a Catholic school and said he wanted the Melbourne archdiocese to provide some support for his loyalty.

"I put my career on the line. I'd lost superannuation. I believed that I was a good educationalist and I was being deprived of carrying out my trade," Mr Sleeman told the child abuse royal commission on Wednesday.

He said Cardinal Pell rang him to ask what he wanted.

Mr Sleeman told him: "I want you to go on national TV and the national press and state that the stance I took in Doveton was morally correct and the only one I could take."

Then the archbishop ended the call.

Mr Sleeman agreed with Cardinal Pell's barrister Sam Duggan that the archbishop first said "I can't do that".

"That is what he told me and he hung up," Mr Sleeman said. "Pretty weak."

Cardinal Pell was also attacked on Wednesday by vandals who painted graffiti on the Victorian County Court building where the hearing is taking place and a Catholic archdiocese building, accusing him of covering up child sex abuse by priests.

The graffiti scrawled in black paint across the windows and pillars of the Melbourne archdiocese building in East Melbourne and CBD court included "child molester Pell" and "put Pell in jail for cover up".

It was quickly painted over and covered with black plastic.

Cardinal Pell has not been accused of sexual abuse and has denied allegations he ignored complaints or covered them up.

Cardinal Pell, now the Vatican's financial chief, will return from Rome in mid-December to give evidence to the hearings into abuse in the Melbourne archdiocese and the Ballarat diocese.

A Catholic Church spokesman said the church understood it was an emotional time for many people.

Late on Wednesday, a spokesperson for Cardinal Pell released a statement saying: "As was clear from Mr Sleeman's evidence today at the royal commission, Cardinal Pell was not contacted by Mr Sleeman and in fact had no dealings with Mr Sleeman while he was principal at Doveton."