AUSTRALIA/VATICAN CITY
ABC News (US)
SYDNEY — Jun 4, 2015
By KRISTEN GELINEAU and NICOLE WINFIELD Associated Press
Cardinal George Pell has been dogged for years by allegations that he mishandled the Catholic Church sex abuse crisis in his native Australia, and now the scrutiny is more intense than ever. Australia’s latest inquiry is as high-level as it gets, and since Pell is now the Vatican’s third-most-powerful official, the same can nearly be said for him.
Pell, whom Pope Francis placed in charge of the Vatican’s finances last year, is accused of creating a victims’ compensation program mainly to protect the church’s assets and of using aggressive tactics to discourage victims’ lawsuits, all while he was a bishop in Australia.
Pell is also facing accusations from earlier in his career when he was a priest and auxiliary bishop and not in the ultimate position of authority: that he ignored warnings about an abusive teacher, bribed the victim of a pedophile priest to stay silent and was part of a committee that moved that priest from parish to parish.
Pell has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and defended his record on confronting the abuse scandal as archbishop of Melbourne, and later of Sydney. But the investigation by Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is raising eyebrows in the Vatican, where the pope promised to hold bishops accountable for failing to protect children and care for victims.
The Vatican’s position was further complicated this week when Peter Saunders, a member of Pope Francis’ sexual abuse advisory commission, spoke out against Pell. The issue has now become so fraught that three Vatican offices have issued statements trying to limit the damage by distancing themselves from Saunders’ comments and, to some degree, what is happening Down Under.
Pell testified twice last year before the long-running Royal Commission — the highest form of investigation in Australia — and with pressure mounting, he offered to appear again. On Monday, the commission took him up on that, asking him to testify at a later date.
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