ROME
The Guardian
David Marr
Tuesday 1 March 2016
Here’s my theory. George Pell returned to Ballarat as a young priest with big plans. And why not? He’d gone from Rome to Oxford, where he reckons he was the first Catholic priest to earn a doctorate of philosophy since the Reformation.
Big things were expected of him back in Australia. He expected big things of himself. But for the next 25 years he found himself serving bishops whose record of handling paedophile priests was (in Ballarat) appalling and (in Melbourne) seriously flawed.
Pell is seeing out his career as cardinal in charge of the Vatican’s finances. But what would have happened to his mighty career if early on he had crossed those bishops?
Had young Pell made it his business to find why the paedophile Father Gerald Ridsdale was being shifted from parish to parish in the 1970s – in later years by a committee on which he himself sat – he might well be living the twilight years of his career not in Rome but the seaside parish of Warrnambool.
From Pell’s evidence on the second day of his Roman cross-examination there emerged a picture of an ambitious and capable young priest who decided, early on, to steer clear of this dangerous issue.
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