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All I want is a Christmas Pell
By Tess Lawrence
All contributing editor-at-large Tess Lawrence wants is cowardly Cardinal Pell to come back home to Australia and face the Commission. DEAR SANTA, all I want for Christmas is for Cardinal George Pell to come home and face his accusers. All I want is justice for both the victims and George Pell. For justice to be done and to be seen to be done, on Australian soil, in Ballarat, the accused and accusers all first among equals. I am sick of George Pell's constant missing in action time wasting antics, calling in sick and whatever to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, doing everything possible to avoid a personal appearance. I am sick of George's mate, Bishop Ronald Mulkeans calling in sick to the Royal Commission. SICK OF ALL THE BULLSICKI am sick of all the bullsick. Sick of Cardinal Pell's outrageous arrogance, presumptive self importance and sense of lese majeste. He may be a Prince of the Church, but he is no more worthy of the respect we owe an honest pauper. In a command no doubt oiled as a request, Pell's lawyers sought a private audience with the Commission. That request was denied. Pell is unused to being treated as an ordinary layman, mortal like the rest of us. Private audiences with judicial executives may be the realm of Popes, but not for the likes of those who stand accused of the cover-up of industrial strength child sexual abuse and bribery. The fact that Pell's request was made public is an important motif that the Commission has acted in the interest of transparency and public accountability. PELL — COMPLICIT IN TRAFFICKING OF PAEDOPHILE PRIESTSPell is up to his old tricks. He was complicit in the trafficking of paedophile priests and did nothing to stop them from travelling up the back passage of little children — yet here he is, trying to slither through the back door into the halls of Justice. We have every right to speculate about what Pell wanted to confide to the Royal Commission in private; why he's loathe to appear in person. Was he going to beat on the personal security drum and claim victims would harm him — a delaying tactic that earlier was "planted" in some media outlets ? Or was he going to claim he was on another kind of international hit list? Was he going to claim diplomatic immunity? Or perhaps he's an undercover agent for ASIS or ASIO? Or the CIA? Whatever any security fears, they are equally applicable to all involved and not just Pell, and not just the Royal Commission but across the board of all our courts and legal jurisdictions. We should all be made to feel safe and protected where Justice dwells. Either way, these are matters that should be voiced openly in public. We already put up protective shields around some witnesses and accused. JUST AS WELL PELL NO 'NO WIN, NO FEE' CLAUSE WITH LAWYERSPell's attempt to have a wink and a nod with the Commission backfired on him and his lawyers. Just as well there isn't a "no win, no fee" clause in Pell's legal team's contract, given one QC alone is reputed to be earning $20,000 a day, three times more than what some abuse victims were paid in compensation and a 100 per cent more than hundreds of others. I'm sick of the contriving and conniving; of the orchestration, of the appropriating and appalling grooming and schooling by Pell's lawyers of priestly stooges like the dopey Father John Walshe.Even by my lapsed Catholic reckoning, Father Walshe ought to be still in the Confessional booth until after Christmas and well into the New Year, busily reciting thousands of Hail Marys and Acts of Contrition in penance. FATHER JOHN WALSHE CAUGHT OUT BY ROYAL COMMISSIONFather Walshe – who like the notorious serial paedophile priest, Father Gerald Ridsdale, is a friend and former flatmate of Pell's – was caught out by the Commission after correspondence between Walshe and Pell's legal team was subpoenaed. Walshe, who in a happy coincidence, just happened to be in Rome last month and lunched with Pell was aproached by Pell's lawyers to appear before the Commission. Again, what was to have worked in Pell's favour backfired. The summoned documents revealed Walshe had colluded with Pell's desperate lawyers in at best, doctoring evidence, at worst, fabricating it. DAVID RIDSDALE EARNS APPLAUSE AFTER GRILLING BY PELL'S LAWYERSI'm sick at how one of Ridsdale's victims, his own nephew David Ridsdale who has already testified that George Pell offered him a bribe to shut up about the abuse, was recalled at the behest of Pell's lawyers to appear before the Commission a second time, this time to be interrogated by Pell's legal gunslingers. The Catholic Church's decision to renege on its earlier undertaking not to cross examine victims, exascerbating existing distress and trauma has again backfired on Pell. David Ridsdale was put through an arduous legal grilling and received supportive applause and acknowledgement from fellow victims and supporters for his courageous and steadfast testimony. GUTLESS PELL AVOIDS COMMISSIONIn contrast, when Pell's wimping out of appearing personally before the Commission was announced, there were cries of "coward" and similar expressions of disgust. George Pell claims he's too ill to fly from Rome to Australia. David Risdale has health issues too, like many other victims/survivors, but he flew in from the UK to be cross-examined by Pell's lawyers. That takes guts. SICK OF THE PELL MACHINE, THE PELL SPINI'm sick of the Pell spin; the Pell machine. Of the damage control. Of the cynical attempts to obstruct and manipulate the course of justice, not only in decades past, but also before the Royal Commission. Sinner and coward that I am, I am sick of the constant excuses by these moral and religious cowards. Pell, Mulkearns and their ilk have revealed to the world the squalid and venal mindset of the religious supremacist and arrogant powermonger. PELL, MULKEARNS AND THEIR ILK — UGLY OF HEARTThey are repulsive and ugly of heart; flawed men who are unworthy of their gender and their ministry. Just watching them insinuate their sly repugnant godspeak is almost enough to make one believe in Satan. They give the Devil a bad name. I'm sick of hearing they were trying to protect the "Mother Church". No they weren't. They were protecting the "Father Church". The all-male club where women are banned. Cooee, Our Father who art in Heaven, sullied is thy name. FATHER CHURCH FINGERING THE ROSARY BEADS OF ST PERVERSITYYes that Father Church, where the mafia Code of Omerta means you don't dob on one another for raping children and where each rape, assault, battery and torture is yet another another bead to finger on the Rosary Beads of blessed St Perversity. I am sick of the obfuscation. Sick of the constant lies and misleadings. Sick of the perpetrators and their superior officers who blaspheme against their God and Catholics in the same way that Daesh (the Arabic acronym for Islamic State) blasphemes against Allah and Muslims. Sick of the facile nonsensical pleadings by some that in "those days" the Catholic Church and its shameless hierarchy were unaware that child sex abuse was wrong or a serious or criminal offence that should be reported to the police, and was a sort of victimless crime in the same way some claim baby/child pornography to be victimless. What arrant nonsense. It is utter rot and we know it. DEAR SANTA, BRING CARDINAL PELL HOME TO FACE HIS ACCUSERSSo, Dear Santa, please grant my wish, that I know is shared by many, if not millions of people, both in Australia and overseas. Please make Cardinal George Pell's heart better, so that he is well enough to fly business class to Australia and appear in person at the Royal Commission's Ballarat hearings next February. If you mend his Cardinal's heart in time to meet his accusers before he meets his maker, I feel it will go some way towards repairing the thousands of broken hearts and spilled blood that surely lays upon Pell's conscience and the altar of his Church.
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