AUSTRALIA
lewisblayse.net
Australia’s only Catholic Cardinal, George Pell has become something of a recluse, especially when it comes to Royal Commissions on his priests’ child sexual abuse, and his bishops’ covering-up of them. He has spent much of the year out of the country, staying at his ritzy $30 million Rome hideaway, “Domus Australia” (see previous posting”. Then he was in Peru helping poor villagers pour concrete (see previous posting), and then on a luxury trip through Greece and Turkey (also see previous posting), fantasizing about being St. Paul.
God knows where he is now, but that’s easy for someone who is omnipresent. For the rest of us, it’s all a mystery. Is he on another holiday? Is he off praying somewhere in the Outback? Surely, he is not hiding from the media while the “Towards Healing” process is being examined by the Royal Commission?
Pell may have set up the alternative “Melbourne Response” for dealing with abuse claims while he was Melbourne Archbishop. Also, Melbourne is the only place which does not use “Towards Healing.” However, now Pell is Archbishop of Sydney, which does use “Towards Healing”. Further, while he is not literally the CEO of the Catholic Church in Australia, he is its most senior spokesperson.
In the past he has used his position to comment on gays, abortion and all of those sorts of things, but he has not used his position to comment on what has been happening at the present hearings into “Towards Healing”. One must wonder why the good Cardinal has left it all to the mere bishops and Archbishops.
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