AUSTRALIA
The Age

[with video]

March 8, 2016

Peter Craven

Last week we saw Cardinal George Pell cross-examined for about 20 hours at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse, with the 74-year-old prelate speaking via video link from Rome. Afterwards there was a meeting with victims who were pleased to hear he would try to set up a centre for survivors of abuse.

In an hour-long interview on Sky with Andrew Bolt, Pell said he wasn’t so stiff on the inside and, at one point, he appeared to weep. Yet none of this cut the mustard: from much of the response to Pell’s testimony, both during and after it, you would imagine he is personally responsible for the sins of the Church.

Why? Because we were witnessing a show trial. A week before the hearing began, the Herald Sun published a leak from Victoria Police…