A friend of George Pell gives evidence to help Pell's lawyers

Broken Rites
December 22, 2015

http://brokenrites.org.au/drupal/node/386

Australia's national child-abuse Royal Commission has learned how George Pell recruited supporters from among suburban priests when he began his rise to power in Melbourne in the 1980s and 1990s. Broken Rites understands that Pell was welcomed particularly by conservative (as distinct from moderate-minded) priests. One of these traditionalist supporters, Father John Walshe, has given evidence to the Royal Commission on behalf of Cardinal Pell's lawyers. This Broken Rites article is an analysis of Walshe's evidence.

Originally a priest in the Ballarat diocese (which covered the western half of Victoria), George Pell moved to Melbourne in 1985 to become the head of the Melbourne seminary (Corpus Christi College, then based at Melbourne's Clayton), which trained priests for Victoria and Tasmania. In 1987 he was appointed as one of Melbourne's four regional auxiliary bishops under the authority of Archbishop Frank Little (Bishop Pell's region was Melbourne's south-eastern suburbs). This is when he became acquainted with allies such as Father John Walshe.

At this stage, Pell was no more famous nationally than any of Australia's forty or so other Catholic bishops. But he was working on it.

Broken Rites has analysed the Royal Commission transcripts for 15-16 December 2015.

Fr John Thomas Walsh gave the Royal Commission a copy of his curriculum vitae. Born in Melbourne in 1958, Walshe attended school at St James Catholic Primary School Gardenvale (1963-1967) and Christian Brothers College St Kilda (1968-1975). He began studying for the priesthood at Melbourne's Corpus Christi seminary in 1976, aged 18, and was ordained as a priest in Melbourne by Archbishop Frank Little on 14 August 1982. [Father George Pell then was still based in Ballarat]

Father Walshe's early appointments as an assistant priest in the Melbourne archdiocese included:

• Parish of St Mary of the Angels, GEELONG (1982-1983);
• Parish of St Thomas the Apostle, BLACKBURN (1983-1986);
• St Jude's, SCORESBY (1986-1988); and
• St Gerard's, NORTH DANDENONG (1988-1992).

Walshe told the Royal Commission that, while in his early parishes in the mid-1980s, he probably met George Pell socially, perhaps while re-visiting the seminary where Pell was the new rector. By 1988, he had became better acquainted with Pell as the new regional bishop for Walshe's area.

In answer to a question, Walshe told the Commission:

"When I was in the Parish of St Gerard in North Dandenong, Bishop Pell was our Regional Bishop...  He had the practice of inviting priests of his zone, his area, to dinners, so to get to know them because he wasn't a priest of Melbourne and he sort of took every opportunity to get to know the clergy, so I came to know him better through then."

Father Walshe, who is interested in church history, helped Cardinal Pell's research concerning some worldwide church matters, the Commission was told.

As an auxiliary bishop, Pell was based at the Mentone parish (in Melbourne's  outer south-east). In 1992, Walshe was appointed as an assistant priest at Bishop Pell's Mentone parish. Bishop Pell evidently played a role in making this appointment, Walsh told the Commission. 

At Mentone, Walshe lived in the bishop's house with Pell, while two other priests lived in Mentone's normal presbytery. In 1995, Walshe was promoted to the rank of Dean of the Mentone parish, and he has remained in charge of that parish since then.

In 1996, Pell managed to get himself appointed by the Vatican as the archbishop of Melbourne, replacing Archbishop Frank Little. Pell then left Mentone and became based at St Patrick's Cathedral, near central Melbourne.

When Pell left Melbourne to befome the archbishop of Sydney in 2001, Walshe attended the Sydney ceremony, according to Walshe's evidence at the Royal Commission.

Although he never rose above the rank of Parish Priest, John Walshe continued to be active in church affairs. For example, at the Royal Commission, he was questioned about some of his other activities in church circles.  He agreed that he is an office bearer in the Australian Confraternity of Catholic Clergy, presently the national chairman. [This is a group of conservative priests, whereas progressively-minded priests tend to be in a different national organisation.]

In response to another question, Walshe agreed that he has been associated with a Catholic organisation called "Courage", which minsters to homosexual people. Walshe said he has "helped" some of the people who come to the "Courage" organisation.

According to church websites, Fr John Walshe was among a number of priests who assisted Archbishop Pell (and, later, Archbishop Denis Hart) in ceremonies and services at Melbourne's St Patrick's Cathedral. Others who assisted in cathedral ceremonies included Fr Charles Portelli and Fr Shane Hoctor. In 1999, Fr Walshe and others assisted Pell in conducting a traditional Latin Mass.

Fr Walshe told the Royal Commission that he visited Cardinal Pell in Rome on 17 November 2015. (This was seven days before the beginning of the Royal Commission's four-weeks public hearing public in Melbourne.) He had dinner with Cardinal Pell and Pell's private secretary (Father Mark Withoos, a Melbourne priest who was ordained by Archbishop Pell in 2000).

According to Fr Walshe, Cardinal Pell was obviously worried about his forthcoming appearance at the Royal Commission where he was to be asked questions about the church's handling of child sexual abuse allegations in Ballarat and Melbourne. Pell was expected to be asked about his time as an adviser to former Ballarat bishop Ronald Mulkearns regarding the movements of priests in the diocese, such as paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale.

One of Gerald Ridsdale's victims was his nephew David Ridsdale who told Pell in a phone call in February 1993 that Father Ridsdale had sexually abused him. According to David Ridsdale's sworn evidence, Pell replied to David in 1993: "I want to know what it will take to keep you quiet". Cardinal Pell denies saying this, but he is yet to state his denial under oath in the Commission's witness box in the Melbourne-Ballarat public hearing. David Ridsdale has told the Commission that his teenage development (including his sexuality) was disrupted by Father Gerald Ridsdale's abuse and by the church's cover-up.

On November 19 (two days after dining with Pell in Rome), Walshe arrived home in Melbourne. A couple of days after this, he received a phone call from Michael Casey (a personal assistant to Pell), who asked if Walshe would submit a written statement to the Royal Commission supporting Pell version of David Ridsdale's 1993 phone call and thus undermining David's evidence about being silenced. Walshe agreed to do this.

About December 2 or 3 in 2015 (during the second week of the Royal Commission's four-weeks public hearing) Walshe was contacted by a member of Pell's legal team. After phone discussions and an exchange of emails between Walshe and this lawyer, the lawyer drafted the final version of Father Walshe's written statement.

The final statement was delivered to Father Walshe by courier and he signed it on 5 December 2015. Walshe told the Commission: "It was all formatted for me and then I signed it and had it witnessed."

This was half way through the Royal Commission's four-weeks Melbourne hearing (and 11 days before Pell was due to give evidence in person in Melbourne).

Fr Walshe's submission reached the Commission on Sunday 6 December, a day before the Commission was due to focus on Ballarat (rather than Melbourne) matters (including survivor David Ridsdale's claim that Cardinal Pell wanted to silence him in 1993). 

After Father Walshe's letter reached the Royal Commission, the chairman (Justice Peter McClellan immediately issued a summons for all the notes and emails which Pell's lawyers possessed regarding Father Walshe's submission.

The Royal Commission scheduled Fr Walshe to appear in the witness box on December 15, the day before Pell's scheduled appearance.

Walshe's version of the 1993 David Ridsdale phone call failed to impress the Royal Commission.

The counsel assisting the commission, Angus Stewart, SC, said that Cardinal Pell's legal team had inserted a number of details into Father Walshe's written statement. These additions, Mr Stewart said, included:

• the time of day when the phone call occurred;
• Father Walshe's subsequent conversation with Bishop Pell about the phone call, and
• which part of the bishop's house they were in when Pell returned from taking the call.

When questioned, Walshe admitted to the Commission that some of his knowledge of the events of 1993 came from watching a television program, "60 Minutes", on the Nine Network in 2002.

Walshe said he discussed the "60 Minutes" program with some of his colleagues who, he said, would have included Father Charles Portelli and Father Anthony Girolami.

On Friday 11 December (three working-days before Pell was due to be in the witness-box), the Royal Commission announced that, according to Pell, he has now decided that he "too sick" to make a plane trip from Rome to Melbourne. Instead, Pell wanted to give his evidence via web-cam in Rome, so that the Royal Commissioners [and the victims and their families] could watch this on a video screen in Melbourne. However, the Royal Commission rejected this request.

The Royal Commission ruled that Pell's next opportunity to answer the Commission's questions, under oath in the witness box, will be when this same public hearing (on Melbourne and Ballarat matters) is scheduled to resume in February 2016 — this time in Ballarat.