AUSTRALIA
The Australian
STUART RINTOUL From: The Australian May 28, 2013
FOR 4 1/2 hours, Australia’s most senior Catholic, George Pell, was grilled about the abuse of children by clergy.
At the end of his evidence, he said he was “fully apologetic and absolutely sorry” about the crimes that had been committed. He also agreed that his predecessor as archbishop of Melbourne, Frank Little, covered up a priest’s abuses in a way that was “unChristlike”.
Cardinal Pell was greeted when he arrived at the Victorian parliamentary inquiry, with a victim calling out two words that he wanted to hear: “the truth”. After he finished giving evidence, another man standing by the wall of the committee room in the Victorian parliament yelled out at him: “Hell is waiting for you George Pell — remember that.”
He was also forced to listen to a mother’s account of how pedophile priest Kevin O’Donnell pressed his penis against the bodies of two children, Emma and Katie Foster, who had parts of their souls stolen by what was done to them.
The most dramatic evidence came four hours into his testimony, when Nationals MP David O’Brien began reading from a 1993 letter from archbishop Little to vicar general monsignor Gerry Cudmore that pedophile priest Des Gannon should be made a “pastor emeritus” as soon as possible, that illness should be used as the excuse, that a letter to that effect should be backdated and that Gannon should be thanked for his good deeds.
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