Why Is Cardinal George Pell Avoiding Australia? Here Is Some Background

Broken Rites
February 5, 2016

http://brokenrites.org.au/drupal/node/391

Cardinal George Pell is feeling "too sick" to face the Catholic Church's victims in Australia but he is healthy enough to continue his big job in Rome as one of the Vatican's top leaders. This Broken Rites article examines some of the background to Pell's reluctance to re-visit Australia to appear in person at this country's national child-abuse Royal Commission.

The Royal Commission met on 5 February 2016 to examine whether Cardinal George Pell is prepared to appear in the witness box in Australia later in February to answer questions about how the Catholic Church, historically, has dealt with clergy sexual abuse in two Australian cities — Melbourne and Ballarat. The answer, from Pell's lawyer, is: "No."

Since May 2015, the Royal Commission has been holding a series of occasional public hearings to obtain information about the archdiocese of Melbourne (covering the Melbourne metropolitan area) and the diocese of Ballarat (covering the western half of the state of Victoria). The Melbourne inquiry is Case Study 35, while Ballarat is Case Study 28.

George Pell, who was born in Ballarat, was originally a priest in the Ballarat diocese. He was later the archbishop of Melbourne (from 1996 to 2001) and then became the archbishop of Sydney before gaining his current senior role in the Vatican.

During a four-weeks public hearing in November-December 2015, the Royal Commission examined a series of submissions concerning clergy sexual crimes in Melbourne and Ballarat. The Royal Commission heard from victims in Ballarat and Melbourne who alleged that church leaders had been ignoring or concealing these crimes. The Commission also questioned priests from Ballarat and Melbourne who replied to many of the Commission's questions by uttering the legal strategy: "I do not remember"or "I cannot recall".

George Pell was originally scheduled to step into the Commission's witness box in Melbourne on 16 December 2015. But in mid-December he became unavailable to do this.

Cardinal Pell is a frequent flyer. In March 2015, for example, Pell made a private trip to Australia, including Ballarat. This was revealed in a magazine of St Patrick's College (Pell's old school in Ballarat), which showed a photo of Pell visiting the school. Pell's trip was so private that even the Australian bishops' spokesman on Royal Commission matters (Mr Francis Sullivan, from the church's "Truth, Justice and Healing Commission") did not know about it until journalists told him in May 2015; and, by this time, Pell presumably had flown back to Rome.

In November-December 2015, Australian observers noticed several interesting events occurring in church affairs:

In November 2015, just weeks before he was due to attend the Royal Commission in Melbourne, Pell travelled to France (to visit World War One battlefields), according to a report published later in the Melbourne Herald Sun.

By early December 2015, the Royal Commission was well advanced into its four-weeks public hearing about Melbourne and Ballarat matters.

Around this time (according to a later reports), Victoria Police detectives were investigating complaints about child-sex assaults that were allegedly committed at Melbourne's St Patrick's Cathedral between 1996 and 2001. On Wednesday 2 December (according to Fairfax Media), detectives from the Victoria Police sex-crimes squad executed a search warrant on premises associated with Melbourne's St Patrick's Catholic cathedral.

On Friday 11 December (three working-days before Pell was due to be in the witness-box in Melbourne), it was announced at the Royal Commission public hearing that Cardinal Pell has decided that, for "health" reasons, he does not wish to make another plane trip from Rome to Melbourne [even if travelling in first-class, and even if the trip is done in stages with stopovers along the way]. Instead, Pell wanted to give his evidence via video-link in Rome, forcing the Royal Commissioners [and the victims and their families] to watch this on a video screen in Australia.

On 23 December, the Victoria Police sex crimes squad issued a media release, saying that the squad's Sano Taskforce wants to hear from any members of the public who have knowledge about any child-sex assaults that were allegedly committed at Melbourne's cathedral between 1996 and 2001. To read more about this police investigation, click HERE.

In December 2015, the Royal Commission ruled that Pell's next opportunity to answer the Commission's questions, under oath in the witness box in Australia (instead of merely issuing media releases to journalists, as Pell often does), would be when this same public hearing (on the Melbourne and Ballarat case-studies) is scheduled to resume in the week beginning 29 February 2016 — this time in Ballarat. On 5 February 2016, the Commission was officially told (by Pell's lawyer) that Pell is still feeling "too sick" to make this visit to Australia. The Commission is still considering what to do about the missing George Pell.

Comments by David Marr

Late on 5 February 2016, after the Royal Commission was officially told about Pell's non-appearance in Australia, some interesting observations were made by journalist David Marr in an article on the Guardian Australia website:

'Just how sick he [Pell] is remains a mystery. Pell is keen to keep the finer details of his heart problems secret.

'His counsel, Alan Myers QC, argued against releasing the medical reports in full: “All it would do is provoke some sort of debate in the press about the medical condition of Cardinal Pell. There is no public interest in that.”

'Under strict secrecy, [Royal Commission chairman] McClellan allowed four barristers to read the latest report. Unimpressed was Paul O’Dwyer SC who told the commission the two-page document revealed “common or garden problems in a man of the cardinal’s age”.

O’Dwyer represents the school principal Graeme Sleeman who lost his job after trying to get rid of a deranged paedophile, Fr Peter Searson. The Searson case is a problem for Pell: he investigated the priest and left him in his Melbourne parish. Sleeman never worked in the Catholic school system again.

'O’Dwyer observed that the difficulties facing Pell “fade into insignificance” compared with the pain and distress of victims giving evidence to the commission.

'But none of the barristers – some in Sydney and some gathered in Melbourne – challenged the medical report outright. One or two remarked that they were not cardiologists and had no access to cardiologists to contest its conclusions.

'Barristers and the commission threw around possible solutions: could the cardinal come by short stages? What about oxygen on the flight? Could he, wondered the commissioner, come by sea?

'But time is on Pell’s side. “There is a need,” said McClellan, “to bring the matter to an end as soon as we can conveniently do so".'

David Marr is the author of a recent book about Pell, entitled The Prince.