VIC Priest Speaks out against Pell

9 News
November 13, 2012

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/2012/11/14/12/01/vic-priest-speaks-out-against-pell

A Victorian Catholic priest has disagreed with Cardinal George Pell over the role of the media in reporting child sex abuse in the Catholic Church, saying most Catholics would be grateful for the exposure.

Cardinal Pell, Australia's most senior Catholic, said on Tuesday the church was not interested in denying misdeeds but objected to it being exaggerated in the media.

But Father Kevin Dillon, of the St Mary of the Angels Catholic Parish in Geelong, said he disagreed with Cardinal Pell and believed the media had played an important role in its focus on child sex abuse in the Catholic Church.

"I believe most Catholics are probably rather grateful to the media for a focus on something which they find enormously shameful and greatly distressing," Father Dillon told ABC Radio on Wednesday.

"I think the media has played a very important and very positive role in all of this."

Prime Minister Julia Gillard on Monday announced a royal commission into institutional responses to child sex abuse.

Father Dillon said a review of the church was needed.

"It's matter of distress to Catholics that it's taken a royal commission and this long for an external examination of the process to be put forward," he said.

Cardinal Pell said he hoped the wide-ranging royal commission would actually stop a "smear campaign" against his church.