AUSTRALIA
The Australian
Editorial
FEBRUARY 22, 2016
George Pell has already appeared twice before the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse — once in person and once via video link from Rome — and always made it clear he was prepared to do so again.
It would be better for all concerned, especially the cardinal, if he did not have a serious heart condition that precludes long-distance flying at present. If that were the case, he could give evidence in person about Ballarat, where he served as a young priest but had no authority in the diocese, and the Archdiocese of Melbourne, where he established the Melbourne Response shortly after his appointment as archbishop in 1996. It was one of the first formal processes of any church in the world for dealing with child sexual abuse. Victim groups regarded it at the time as “the best of a bad lot’’.
In giving evidence electronically, Cardinal Pell will still be subjected to the same rigorous cross-examination he would have faced here. He deserves to be heard respectfully, like all witnesses. That is not good enough for his antagonists, however, who have whipped up a dangerous lynch-mob mentality rarely seen in Australia even against prominent child murderers. It needs to be contained and the tensions surrounding it examined in a clear light.
Last week, singer Tim Minchin hurled verbal abuse at the cardinal, branding him “scum’’, a “buffoon’’ and a “coward’’ on Network Ten’s The Project, with ABC’s 7.30 rerunning the foul-mouthed ditty. As The Australian noted in Cut & Paste, Minchin is hostile to the church, with the The Pope Song also a litany of hate speech: “F..k the motherf..ker,” it runs. “F..k the motherf..king Pope.”
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