Unprecedented Fury at Ballarat Hearings

By Mark Brolly
The Tablet
December 29, 2015

http://www.thetablet.co.uk/world-news/5/7657/unprecedented-fury-at-ballarat-hearings

Every case heard by Australia’s Royal Commission into child sexual abuse is uncovering ineptitude, maladministration, cover-ups and corrupt practices, according to the Church’s Truth, Justice and Healing Council head. Francis Sullivan described unprecedented and “almost palpable anger” at the recent hearing into abuse at Catholic parishes and institutions in the Victorian Goldfields city of Ballarat.

This, he said, was provoked by the testimonies and in part by the failure of Ballarat-born Cardinal George Pell to attend the second instalment of the inquiry into decades of abuse in the Ballarat diocese, citing ill health. “This miserable history cannot be denied, nor can it be rationalised away. The very fact that a faith-based institution would perpetuate such evil is incomprehensible. But it has – and now the time for reckoning has well and truly arrived,” wrote Mr Sullivan in his blog on 17 December, the final day of the pre-Christmas public hearings.