AUSTRALIA
The Saturday Paper
MIKE SECCOMBE
The coincidence could hardly be more unfortunate, but it could not have been foreseen. Back in March, on the second anniversary of his pontificate, Pope Francis announced a year to be dedicated to the major theme of his papacy, mercy.
The Year of Mercy, he announced, will begin on the day the church calls the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, December 8.
“I am convinced,” Francis said, “that the whole church will find in this jubilee the joy needed to rediscover and make fruitful the mercy of God, with which all of us are called to give consolation to every man and woman of our time.”
Here in Australia, however, the year of mercy will start not with joy but with an inquisition. The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse will turn its focus back on the Catholic Church, with hearings in Melbourne starting on December 7. For the third time, Cardinal George Pell will be called into the witness box.
Among the many descriptors that have been applied to Cardinal Pell, “merciful” does not feature prominently.
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There was nothing merciful about the way the Sydney archdiocese sought to protect the church’s assets from claims by victims. Under Pell, the church’s lawyers were relentless – and successful – in their determination to establish in law a defence that says because the trusts that hold the church’s enormous wealth do not actually employ its priests, they could not be held liable for compensation for the acts of those priests.
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