AUSTRALIA
The Age
May 27, 2013
Barney Zwartz
Religion editor, The Age.
It was meeting George Pell that that severed Chrissie Foster from her faith in the Catholic Church.
The mother of two daughters who were horrifically abused by a priest went to her 1997 meeting with the then archbishop of Melbourne still a committed servant of the church. She left it crushed, embittered and furious.
Displaying what her husband Anthony Foster later described as a ”sociopathic lack of empathy”, Archbishop Pell was bullying and confrontational from the start of the meeting organised so Pell could listen to their experiences.
Chrissie Foster describes the encounter in her book Hell on the Way to Heaven. She had prepared a dossier of her varied church involvements, but never had a chance to show it. The Fosters were shown into a cramped furniture storage room in the presbytery and given a small wooden bench for both of them to sit on. The only other seat was a throne-like red leather armchair in which Pell was stretched out in a way they found intimidating.
When Anthony Foster told how Father Kevin O’Donnell repeatedly raped Emma and Katie Foster, starting when each was five years old, Pell replied: “I hope you can substantiate that in court.”
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