UNITED STATES
First Things
by Julia Yost
7 . 3 . 17
Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of George Pell
Louise Milligan
Melbourne, 277 pages, $11.21
George Cardinal Pell was charged last week with multiple counts of sexual abuse of children. He currently resides in Rome, tasked with cleaning up the Vatican finances. This week he will fly to his native Australia, where he vows to fight all charges. His successor in the see of Sydney, Archbishop Anthony Fisher, advises letting the justice system take its course.
Australian civil authorities have yet to announce the number and nature of the offenses with which Pell is charged. But allegations against Pell have been accumulating for years. He stands publicly accused of complicity in a sex abuse coverup in the diocese of Ballarat in the 1970s and early 1980s; complicity in a sex abuse coverup in the archdiocese of Melbourne in the late 1980s and 1990s; and various counts of child molestation, assault, and indecent exposure, from 1961 through 1997.
In recent decades, child sex abuse cases have notably arisen from, and elicited, public hysteria. They have created poor conditions for the operation of the justice system. Ludicrous prosecutions and unjust convictions have resulted, far too numerous to count as the cost of doing business. In Australia, public hysteria concerning Pell is already extreme. Here is Louise Milligan’s florid book, written “from the complainants’ point of view.” Its publication was advanced from July to May, presumably to influence the deliberations of the civil authorities. Once Pell had been charged, its publisher removed it from local bookshops to avoid influencing the deliberations of jury members. But its claims have already been broadcast throughout the Australian media. Archbishop Fisher’s repose in the justice system may prove mistaken.
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