AUSTRALIA
ABC – 7.30
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Broadcast: 13/11/2012
Reporter: Leigh Sales
Archbishop of Sydney George Pell says the media have campaigned against the Catholic Church but says the church will cooperate with the Government’s Royal Commission into child abuse within institutions.
Transcript
LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: A day after the Government announced a royal commission into child sex abuse, the Catholic Archbishop George Pell has defended his institution’s handling of such matters. Cardinal Pell believes there’s a persistent press campaign against the Catholic Church and he objects to his organisation being singled out. He also says the Church’s association with sex abuse is, at times, exaggerated. In a press conference today the Archbishop said he would fully cooperate with the Commonwealth investigation as a way to bring to an end decades of damage to the Church’s reputation and to deliver justice to victims. Cardinal Pell has been dogged by this issue for much of his leadership in the Catholic Church.
The day after the Government called a royal commission, Cardinal Pell finally agreed to answer questions about what has led to it.
GEORGE PELL, CATHOLIC ARCHBISHOP OF SYDNEY: We object to it being exaggerated, we object to being described as the “only cab on the rank”, we acknowledge – with shame – the extent of the problem. One of the reasons why we welcome the royal commission is that this commission will enable those claims to be validated… or found to be a significant exaggeration.
LEIGH SALES: George Pell’s history with the child sex abuse issue goes back decades. In the early 90s, in the Victorian town of Ballarat, one of the Catholic Church’s most infamous paedophile scandals was unfolding. The perpetrator, Father Gerald Ridsdale, abused as many as 200 children over 20 years, while his superiors did nothing to stop him.
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