AUSTRALIA
Pearls and Irritations
Posted on March 29, 2014 by John Menadue
It was sad and painful, and no satisfaction, sitting at home in front of a computer, watching a senior prelate stagger around, wounded and bleeding. I sat glued to the screen, mesmerized, fiercely proud of our legal system, and watched a prince of the Church in humble street-clothes being tormented.
George Pell, Cardinal Archbishop, sat there day after day, an image of King Lear, a broken man, weary, slow and incompetent, a man who had spent his life climbing the greasy clerical pole, now at the tail-end of his life, being forced to answer questions and to confront his conscience, summoning hollow logic to assist in his defence, thrashing about blaming others, constructing academic distinctions, trying to exculpate himself and deflect the load which will inevitably be heaped upon him. His private secretary, Dr Casey, Mr John Davoren, the elderly man and ex-priest who used to be in charge of the healing service of the archdiocese, and Monsignor Brian Rayner, his former chancellor – all muddlers, all incompetent and unable to provide an accurate version of events, while he was macro-managing the show with his hands off the wheel. The board of any public company would have long since called for the resignation of its CEO.
His time in Sydney was at an end and the cardinal was heading off to the Vatican to take control of a bank in trouble and of the finances of a giant, international organization. Let’s hope he asks more questions over there than he did at St Mary’s. He was in charge. He was the boss. The orchestra was under his direction. At the beginning of the hearing, even years before, Pell should had put his hands in the air and confessed. “I made bad choices. Very bad. Me. I received bad advice and accepted it. I allowed wounded people to be tormented. They were my mistakes – and they have had truly awful consequences.”
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.