AUSTRALIA
Daily Telegraph
MIRANDA DEVINEThe Sunday Telegraph
TOMORROW at 8am our time, Cardinal George Pell will give evidence via videolink from the Hotel Quirinale in Rome to the child sexual abuse royal commission.
It will be the third time he has testified to the commission. He has hardly been hiding. And yet the point of much of the unrestrained vitriol spewed at him is that he is a coward who has refused to “come home” to testify.
But Pell, 74, has a heart complaint and has been told by doctors not to fly, a fact accepted by royal commissioner Peter McClellan after some delay, which served to add to pressure on the star witness of the $500 million exercise.
Watching Pell tomorrow will be a self-invited group of about 120, including 50 journalists and assorted victims, supporters and Pell-haters who have travelled to Rome, on the proceeds of an abusive ditty by anti-Catholic crooner Tim Minchin, calling Pell “scum” and “coward”.
The royal commission has sent “support staff” and media people, at unknown cost, to assist this unofficial lynch mob.
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