AUSTRALIA
The Courier
Beau Donelly
14 May 2017
Senior figures in the Catholic Church have accused Cardinal George Pell of hijacking the national compensation scheme for clergy sex abuse victims by swooping in at the last minute to announce his own initiative.
Cardinal Pell, one of the most powerful men in the Vatican, launched the Melbourne Response in 1996 when he was Archbishop of Melbourne.
The controversial scheme was set up as an alternative to civil litigation, with victims of paedophile priests given access to counselling and compensation. Cardinal Pell has long said he was the first bishop to develop a program responding to the scourge of child sex abuse in the church.
But accounts from officials present at an Australian Catholic Bishops Conference shortly after Cardinal Pell announced his scheme have challenged his decades-old account, and strongly suggest he undermined the church’s plan to present a unified front in dealing with the crisis.
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.