Is a Fair Trial Possible? Catholic Voices on Cardinal Pell’s Return to Australia
By Jo Lane
FEARS expressed by senior lawyers that Cardinal George Pell would not get a fair hearing on historic sexual offences were echoed within the Australian Catholic community this week when the nation’s highest-serving Catholic returned from Rome on Monday for his July 18 court appearance. Pell has been serving as Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy at the Vatican, the third most senior Catholic at the Vatican, and previously gave evidence in Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. He has strenuously denied the allegations that involve multiple complainants. Asian Correspondent spoke to Catherine Smibert, a journalist who grew up in Pell’s hometown of Ballarat where he served as a priest from 1973 to 1983. Smibert was also employed by the Vatican media in Rome for eight years. Speaking from her personal and working knowledge of Cardinal Pell she said, “I genuinely question the capacity for a fair trial.” She said he had been “persecuted unfairly” and the charges were “the grosses miscarriage of justice”. Smibert described the Cardinal as “an exceptionally warm, truly caring man with a capacity for pastoral care that is second to none”. “It’s so unfair, the antithesis of the man himself, of what he stands for, both behind the scenes and in public.” Smibert was personally touched by Cardinal Pell’s reservations about her pending marriage in 2005 to a man she discovered later was addicted to paedophilic pornography. She said the Cardinal spoke to her now ex-husband out of his own pastoral concern and checked in on her when the marriage broke down “like any good uncle might do”. “I had wondered why it was that this man had picked my ex’s issues when no one else had, “I actually believe it might be because he had been so involved in working against paedophilia in the Church that he knew what pathological signs to look out for.” The Age said this week that two QCs involved in the case, Peter Chadwick, and Remy van de Weil, had “questioned whether jurors could shut out their perceptions of the Cardinal and the Catholic Church and focus solely on the criminal allegations.” They raised the idea of a judge-alone trial. This perception of the cardinal stems in part from QC submissions to the royal commission into child abuse in October 2016 that said Cardinal Pell and other senior officials had failed young abuse victims and not acted on information regarding the sexual misconduct by a paedophile priest. However Smibert said the cardinal initiated pastoral support to HIV homes in the 60s and 70s “when no one would sit there and hold their hand” and had commissioned “Towards Healing“, the Australian Catholic Church’s primary document on sexual, emotional and physical abuse. “I also know His Eminence has done his darndest over the years to both weed them (paedophiles) out, work on zero tolerance policies in the priesthood, improving child protection initiatives and initiating systems to work toward apology filled healing for victims.” Jim Dowling, 61 years, of Brisbane’s Catholic Workers lay movement said, “there is a danger of the witch hunt that people are talking about,” although he didn’t support all of Cardinal Pell’s previous statements. He likened the forthcoming trial of the Cardinal to the notorious one of Lindy Chamberlain’s trial by media in the 1980s when she was falsely convicted of murdering her baby. “No matter what he’s done and what people feel about him, he certainly deserves the benefit of the court system to be treated innocent before he’s guilty.” The Catholic Workers are a movement of people that believe in personal responsibility for others and the world around. Dowling and his family are involved in hospitality to the poor, peace and justice issues. In March he removed a sword from the Cross of Sacrifice in the Toowong cemetery which he said the Brisbane Bishop’s office denounced. Dowling will face court on July 19 on charges of vandalising a war memorial. Another Catholic parishioner in Brisbane, who didn’t want to be identified, said, “I think the tragedy is once you’ve been tarred or smeared in our society it’s very hard to recover from that. Our system is one of innocence until proven guilty. It’s a hallmark of Western democracy.” He said he was glad to live in a secular society where secular courts had taken on a role once given the church to uphold high standards. “Here’s a case of Caesar doing the job of God and bringing the institutions to task… I was reading in a book that Pope Francis said when you face God the question will be what did you to do to support your government. For a Christian you need to allow the rule of law to take its course, even though it’s difficult to bear.” Logan Central resident Michael Curtin, 63, said whatever the outcome it would probably not end well for the church. Curtin is involved in both the Courage Ministry group that supports same-sex attracted people, and the Emmanuel Catholic community, although did not speak on their behalf. “These charges are against a man whose character is disliked both within and outside the Catholic Church. Also, they are against a man who has aligned himself to the Church closely and whose enemies also align him with the Catholic Church. “If he were found guilty, the pre-existent dislike of him will be used to discredit the Catholic Church further to the already reliable findings of the Royal Commission. If he were found not guilty, and I expect he’ll employ a top-notch defence person, his release will be excused as clever litigation, but a numb and bad feeling against him and the Church will not be resolved.” 9 News reported this week that Cardinal Pell had in fact hired a top Melbourne lawyer, Robert Richter, QC, considered one of Australia’s most gifted defenders. Whatever the result, Smibert said the church had weathered worse or as bad as this and would stand strong as it “is bigger than one court case”. “The church has a poor capacity of the need for PR; that’s a failing rather than a lack of initiative in this regards. Knowing the church intimately has made me realise it gets a bad wrap when really it doesn’t know how to promote itself. “I do feel we’re a Church of the new millennium and we will be able to shed light on the truth that the Church is on the cusp of activities in child protection, that there is a taskforce around zero tolerance led by women in the Vatican; no one talks about that.” The Catholic parishioner said the impact on him of Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse and allegations, such as those against Cardinal Pell, had been one of “overwhelming shame”. “There are these waves of disbelief in asking how can this have happened, why was it allowed to have happened. It is so obvious it was wrong and yet it went on and on… In the Gospel message Jesus said ‘let the little children come to me’. That scripture really resonates to me; there’s a clear call to protect, embrace, uphold children. They’re the future. For that to have happened under bishops’ or whoever’s watch, it’s unforgivable.” Dowling said while abuse charges had never been dealt with properly in the first place, changes within the Catholic Church meant getting away with abuse should no longer be possible. “Those in power and privilege covered it up for many years. Now it’s all been exposed and they’ve done everything they can to prevent it happening in the future.”
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