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…