Pell made a secret air trip to Australia, now he is dodging the church's victims

Broken Rites
February 15, 2016

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

Cardinal George Pell has had a long-standing "heart problem" but this didn't stop him from making a secret trip by air to Australia in March-April 2015, Broken Rites has learned. Even the Australian bishops' spokesman on Royal Commission matters (Mr Francis Sullivan, from the church's "Truth, Justice and Healing Commission") didn't know about the trip until journalists told him in May 2015; and, by then, Pell was safely back in the Vatican. Now, in 2016, Pell is refusing to re-visit Australia, preferring to give his next batch of evidence to the Royal Commission by video-link from Rome without having to face the church's victims. Some victims are offering to pay first-class air fares for a medical heart specialist to accompany Pell on a flight to Australia for the Royal Commission. But, clearly, Pell is avoiding Australia while civil investigations are under way about church sexual abuse that occurred on Pell's watch. As for Pell's "heart problems", church victims say that Pell is behaving towards them as though he was born without a heart.

Pell's trip to Australia in March-April 2015 included a visit to Ballarat, the town at the centre of church-abuse allegations (and the cover-up) in western Victoria. And the trip was just a few weeks before the Royal Commission was due to hold a public hearing in Ballarat (the hearing was from Tuesday 19 May to Friday 29 May 2015).

Pell's trip to Australia was revealed in the April 2015 edition of the magazine of St Patrick's College, Ballarat — the school where Pell had been a pupil. The magazine indicates that Pell's visit to the school occurred about 27 March 2015, "during a short vacation in Australia". There is a photo of Pell, together with headmaster John Crowley, while touring the school to see its latest extensions.

It is not known what else Pell did during his 2015 trip to Australia but it would have been an ideal opportunity to have discussions with his Australian lawyers and his communications strategists, to figure out how to handle the Royal Commission and the victims. (Did the Royal Commissioners realise that Pell had privately visited Australia from Rome in March 2015?)

Pell's testimony, by video link, in May 2015 was a technical disaster, with disruptions to the vision and/or the sound. And, with the Royal Commissioners sitting in a court-room in Ballarat, it was difficult for the commissioners to show certain documents to Pell when seeking his comment about those documents.

Now, in 2016, Pell is refusing to re-visit Australia, wanting again to give his next batch of evidence to the Royal Commission in private by video-link from Rome.

Church victims in Australia are offering to pay first-class air fares for a heart specialist to accompany Pell on a flight to Australia for the Royal Commission. But, clearly, Pell is not keen to make a public visit to Australia at present

George Pell, who was born in Ballarat in 1941, 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 in 2014.

The Royal Commission has been examining a series of specific case-studies, and it has asked Pell to testify regarding three of these:

• Case Study 8, held in Sydney, in March 2014, concerning Sydney matters. Pell, who was then the archbishop of Sydney, gave evidence to this case study in person. This was just before he departed from Sydney to take up his new role Rome being in charge of the Vatican's treasury.
• Case Study 35 (about how clergy sexual abuse was handled in the archdiocese of Melbourne, which means the Melbourne metropolitan area). This evidence was given in May 2015 by video-link, just after his secret visit to Australia.
• Case Study 28 (about the diocese of Ballarat, covering the western half of the state of Victoria).

The Royal Commission had hoped to take the final evidence from Pell for Case Study 28 at a public hearing in Melbourne on 16 December 2015. But Pell failed to turn up, claiming now that aeroplane flights are bad for his heart.

Australian observers noticed several interesting events occurring in church affairs around the time when Pell suddenly went missing:

• 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. Did Pell travel by plane from Rome to Paris and return?
• 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 step into 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. [But did he consider travelling in first-class, accompanied by a doctor, and doing the trip in stages with stopovers along the way?]. Pell sent the Royal Commission a medical certificate signed by a medical specialist who works for the Vatican. The medical certificate didn't say that Pell couldn't travel; it merely indicated that that it would be better for Pell if he did the evidence by video-link from Rome.
• 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.

The public hearing on the Melbourne and Ballarat case studies is scheduled to resume in the week beginning 22 February 2016 — this time in Ballarat. Pell will give his evidence by video link from Rome in the week beginning February 29.

The Commissioners (and the victims) will have to watch Pell's evidence on a screen at a public hearing in a Ballarat court-room. Some victims would like to fly to Rome (if they could afford the air fares), so they could be present in the video room when Pell is speaking to the camera.

Meanwhile, George Pell will not be setting foot in Australia again for the foreseeable future — at least not while there are investigations into Catholic Church sex-crimes and the church's culture of cover-up.