AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites
By a Broken Rites researcher, article updated 15 February 2016
Cardinal George Pell has had a long-standing “heart problem” but this didn’t stop him from making a secret trip by air to Australia in March-April 2015, Broken Rites has learned. Even the Australian bishops’ spokesman on Royal Commission matters (Mr Francis Sullivan, from the church’s “Truth, Justice and Healing Commission”) didn’t know about the trip until journalists told him in May 2015; and, by then, Pell was safely back in the Vatican. Now, in 2016, Pell is refusing to re-visit Australia, preferring to give his next batch of evidence to the Royal Commission by video-link from Rome without having to face the church’s victims. Some victims are offering to pay first-class air fares for a medical heart specialist to accompany Pell on a flight to Australia for the Royal Commission. But, clearly, Pell is avoiding Australia while civil investigations are under way about church sexual abuse that occurred on Pell’s watch. As for Pell’s “heart problems”, church victims say that Pell is behaving towards them as though he was born without a heart.
Pell’s trip to Australia in March-April 2015 included a visit to Ballarat, the town at the centre of church-abuse allegations (and the cover-up) in western Victoria. And the trip was just a few weeks before the Royal Commission was due to hold a public hearing in Ballarat (the hearing was from Tuesday 19 May to Friday 29 May 2015).
Pell’s trip to Australia was revealed in the April 2015 edition of the magazine of St Patrick’s College, Ballarat — the school where Pell had been a pupil. The magazine indicates that Pell’s visit to the school occurred about 27 March 2015, “during a short vacation in Australia”. There is a photo of Pell, together with headmaster John Crowley, while touring the school to see its latest extensions.
It is not known what else Pell did during his 2015 trip to Australia but it would have been an ideal opportunity to have discussions with his Australian lawyers and his communications strategists, to figure out how to handle the Royal Commission and the victims. (Did the Royal Commissioners realise that Pell had privately visited Australia from Rome in March 2015?)
Pell’s testimony, by video link, in May 2015 was a technical disaster, with disruptions to the vision and/or the sound. And, with the Royal Commissioners sitting in a court-room in Ballarat, it was difficult for the commissioners to show certain documents to Pell when seeking his comment about those documents.
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