AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald
November 12, 2014
Andrew West
ABC radio presenter and columnist
ANALYSIS
Anthony Fisher steps into one of the most powerful jobs in Australian Catholicism when he is installed as archbishop of Sydney on Wednesday night. The big question is whether he can step out of the shadow of his predecessor.
Cardinal George Pell had long hoped that Fisher, a relatively youthful 54, would succeed him as a long-term archbishop. Other names had reportedly gone to the Vatican, including that of Brisbane archbishop Mark Coleridge – a thoroughly Australian, rugby coach-style prelate – and Newcastle’s Bill Wright, a gentle, pastoral man now preoccupied with cleaning up the sexual abuse crises left by his predecessors in the diocese.
But Pell appears to have prevailed in his preference for Fisher. All this would suggest that the new archbishop will continue the long reign of Catholic orthodoxy in Sydney.
Leaders, however, evolve, especially in the Catholic world. At the start of their papacies, few expected radical things of Leo XIII and John XXIII – or, indeed, of Francis. …
On the crucial question of how he handles the sexual abuse crisis, Fisher has clearly learned from an incident during World Youth Day in 2008, when he said some people were “dwelling crankily … on old wounds”. It’s fair to observe that he now speaks with a profound sense of disgust. “We accept that this is a spiritual and moral problem in our church and not just some bad guys in the old days,” he told ABC. He even speaks of the church being “purified by this experience by the humiliation”.
On a practical level, this means replacing the church’s tragically flawed procedures for dealing with abuse victims … and laying some real money on the line.
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