AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald
The Religious Write
Barney Zwartz is religion editor of The Age
George Pell has been a beacon for criticism over the years and even more so this week. Much of it is richly deserved. But some of it is, frankly, silly and shows a culpable ignorance (at least, if you want to be a commentator) of the Catholic Church.
George Pell is Australia’s only active cardinal, but he is not Australia’s chief Catholic. No one is. If there were such a position it would belong to the cardinal’s close friend and colleague, Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart, as the chairman of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference.
Each bishop of Australia’s 30-odd Catholic dioceses is theoretically autonomous, answerable to the Pope, not Pell. So to say he should have done this in Newcastle or that in Ballarat is to miss the point: he has no authority there; he is the Archbishop of Sydney.
But that doesn’t let him off the hook when it comes to talking about the Catholic Church in Australia. As he said in Tuesday’s press conference in Sydney, he has considerable moral influence, which he uses to comfort some and discomfort others.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.