AUSTRALIA
The Australian

TESS LIVINGSTONE OCTOBER 14, 2015

Civil war has erupted at the top of the Catholic Church, with 13 ­cardinals, including Australia’s George Pell, warning the Pope in a letter that the church is in ­danger of collapsing like liberal Protestant churches in the modern era.

The cardinals say the threat of collapse has been accelerated by the “abandonment of key elements of Christian belief and practice in the name of pastoral adaptation’’.

As well as Cardinal Pell, the Vatican’s Secretary for the Economy, cardinals from Bologna, ­Toronto, New York, Galveston, Nairobi, Mexico, Utrecht, Durban and Caracas signed the letter, as well as other senior Vatican ­officials. These included Guinean Cardinal Robert Sarah, the church’s Prefect for Divine Worship, and German Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, the Prefect for Doctrine.

The row centres on the three-week Synod on the Family under way in Rome and being attended by about…