AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites
By a Broken Rites researcher (article posted 22 December 2015)
Australia’s national child-abuse Royal Commission has learned how George Pell recruited supporters from among suburban priests when he began his rise to power in Melbourne in the 1980s and 1990s. Broken Rites understands that Pell was welcomed particularly by conservative (as distinct from moderate-minded) priests. One of these traditionalist supporters, Father John Walshe, has given evidence to the Royal Commission on behalf of Cardinal Pell’s lawyers. This Broken Rites article is an analysis of Walshe’s evidence.
Originally a priest in the Ballarat diocese (which covered the western half of Victoria), George Pell moved to Melbourne in 1985 to become the head of the Melbourne seminary (Corpus Christi College, then based at Melbourne’s Clayton), which trained priests for Victoria and Tasmania. In 1987 he was appointed as one of Melbourne’s four regional auxiliary bishops under the authority of Archbishop Frank Little (Bishop Pell’s region was Melbourne’s south-eastern suburbs). This is when he became acquainted with allies such as Father John Walshe.
At this stage, Pell was no more famous nationally than any of Australia’s forty or so other Catholic bishops. But he was working on it.
Father John Walshe and Bishop George Pell
Broken Rites has analysed the Royal Commission transcripts for 15-16 December 2015.
Fr John Thomas Walsh gave the Royal Commission a copy of his curriculum vitae. Born in Melbourne in 1958, Walshe attended school at St James Catholic Primary School Gardenvale (1963-1967) and Christian Brothers College St Kilda (1968-1975). He began studying for the priesthood at the Melbourne seminary in 1976, aged 18, and was ordained as a priest in 1982 [Father George Pell then was still based in Ballarat]
Father Walshe’s early appointments as an assistant priest in the Melbourne archdiocese included:
* Parish of St Mary of the Angels, Geelong (1982-1983);
* Parish of St Thomas the Apostle, Blackbum (1983-1986);
* St Jude’s, Scoresby (1986-1988); and
* St Gerard’s, North Dandenong (1988-1992).
By 1988 or so, Walshe became acquainted with George Pell who was now in leading roles in Melbourne. Walshe told the Commission:
“When I was in the Parish of St Gerard in North Dandenong, Bishop Pell was our Regional Bishop. . . He had the practice of inviting priests of his zone, his area, to dinners, so to get to know them because he wasn’t a priest of Melbourne and he sort of took every opportunity to get to know the clergy, so I came to know him better through then.”
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