AUSTRALIA
The Canberra Times
May 29, 2013
Jack Waterford
Editor-at-large, The Canberra Times
It was not even the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, but there was George Cardinal Pell, truculent, embattled, irritable and defensive taking on the bowling from Victorian parliamentarians inquiring into the handling of child abuse by religious and other organisations.
It was not a public relations triumph – not even intended to be. One can sense, however, that Pell left thinking he had given as good as he got, and that a few of his hits reached the boundary. He has shown over and over that he simply lacks the self-awareness to know that his every appearance on the subject throws fuel on to the fire – if only because his every facial tic makes it clear that he does not get it.
No one has reached stage one of argument suggesting that Pell condoned or facilitated a culture of abuse in his dioceses. But his combativeness and what one of his critics last year described as ”a sociopathic lack of empathy” seem to be one of the key factors guaranteeing that an array of public inquiries will continue to embarrass and humiliate the church over the next few years.
The archbishop of Sydney, previously the archbishop of Melbourne, has made it clear he is very sorry that there was any sexual abuse of children, particularly if it occurred at the hands of Catholic priests or religious or even lay teachers. The Catholic church, he admits, handled things badly when there suddenly seemed to be an epidemic of complaints of such matters about 25 years ago. Some of his (late) predecessor archbishops of Melbourne frankly handled the matter shamefully, he agrees, and what they did could be described as a cover-up. Once, however, he came to appreciate the dimensions of the problem, he acted swiftly and decisively, setting up an institutional response that embraced victims, led to the identification and punishment of abusers, and which seems, on the basis of present abuse reports, to have worked in much reducing the incidence of abuse.
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