AUSTRALIA
Sunday Telegraph

CARDINAL GEORGE PELL
THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

ON Wednesday the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into Child Abuse brought down its 700 page report. I welcome the publication of the report. It should help the victims.

While the Inquiry hearings were sometimes unconventional and emotional affairs, the report itself seems fair and reasonable. Naturally it covers the awful abuse which occurred in Catholic communities, mainly between 1960 and 1985.

The report details some of the serious failures in the way the church dealt with these crimes and responded to victims, especially before the procedural reforms of the mid 1990s. Irreparable damage has been caused.

By the standards of common decency and by today’s standards, church authorities were not only slow to deal with the abuse, but sometimes did not deal with it in any appropriate way at all. This is indefensible.

The Report offers valuable recommendations to…