AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites
By a Broken Rites researcher, article updated 19 February 2016
Cardinal George Pell makes frequent trips away from his Rome headquarters. For example, in March-April 2015, he made a secret trip by air to Australia, and then he returned to Rome in time to “appear” by video-link (instead of really appearing in person) for a public hearing of Australia’s national child-abuse Royal Commission a few weeks later (in May 2015). The Commissioners had approved Pell’s May 2015 video-link because of the long distance if Pell had to fly to Australia from Rome. The Commissioners did not know of Pell’s recent secret trip but the trip became known by the time of the May 2015 hearing. And Pell’s video-link in May 2015 turned out to be a technological disaster. The Commissioners then asked Pell to appear in person at his next scheduled public hearing in Australia (in December 2015) but Pell refused and his lawyers submitted a “sick note” (signed by one of his own doctors, not an independent one), citing his long-standing “health problems” (as a 74-year-old man) as grounds for getting yet another video-link. Meanwhile, a few weeks before his December 2015 “sick note”, Pell travelled from Rome to France to tour the World War One battlefields (but Pell doesn’t have “health problems” in France, only in Australia). Pell’s next non-appearance by video-link is to be on 29 February 2016. Thus, Pell seems to be in no hurry to re-visit Australia while civil investigations are under way into allegations about clergy sexual abuse and allegations about the church’s culture of cover-up.
Pell’s secret trip to Australia in March-April 2015 included a visit to his home town, Ballarat, which is the town at the centre of church-abuse allegations (and the cover-up) in western Victoria. Pell’s trip was revealed in the April 2015 edition of the magazine of St Patrick’s College, Ballarat — the school where Pell had been a pupil. The magazine article, which has been seen by Broken Rites, indicates that Pell’s visit to the school occurred about 27 March 2015, “during a short vacation in Australia”. There is a photo of Pell, together with headmaster John Crowley, while touring the school to see its latest extensions.
The editors of this school magazine didn’t realise that, by revealing Pell’s visit, they were “letting the cat out of the bag”. News of the school magazine article (and the secret trip) reached journalists in Australia during the Commission’s May 2015 public hearing.
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