AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

Peter FitzSimons
Columnist

The Cardinal’s sins means he is finished

Staggeringly, even after all the testimony of Cardinal Pell this week at the royal commission, there is still a scattered band of supporters who refuse to accept the obvious: it is over, and he is finished. The absolute best case that can be made in his defence is that, instead of wilfully ignoring atrocities going on all around him, he just didn’t get that it was his duty to do something, to act for the children. This line of defence has it that he didn’t get it because that was the way things were done in those times, or, more to the point, not done. Now, even if you accept that – and I don’t – how obvious is it that the times have completely passed him by? The Catholic Church sits atop a…