Little Bit of Justice Lacking for Catholic Church Sex Abuse Victims

By Patrick Carlyon
Daily Telegraph
May 20, 2013

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/little-bit-of-justice-lacking-for-catholic-church-sex-abuse-victims/story-e6freuy9-1226647201544

FORMER Melbourne archbishop Frank Little died and was buried in 2008. Yesterday, at the parliamentary child abuse inquiry, he was buried again.

Little "covered up" the abuses of paedophile priests, incumbent Archbishop Denis Hart conceded under sustained questioning.

Little arranged confidential agreements. He kept no records of complaints. And, as in the case of paedophile priest Father Wilfred Baker, it appears that Little moved offending priests from one parish to the next.

"I'm not responsible for his actions but I certainly feel the pain as a result of those failed actions," the Archbishop said.

For almost 3 1/2 hours, he fronted a tough crowd. When his inquisitors momentarily dropped their scepticism, which wasn't often, those in the gallery - many of them victims or families of victims - scoffed at his answers.

He repeated that he wanted to "move forward". The problem was that everyone else in the packed room - bar perhaps his entourage of six - wanted to cast back. The Archbishop kept saying there had been huge problems - they were "shameful" and amounted to an "awful evil" - but that the Catholic Church had done much to correct these terrible wrongs.

He spoke at great length about meetings with victims of abuse. Yet he received collective sighs from the audience for several lapses into flippancy, a problem ascribed to his superior, Cardinal George Pell, whose scheduled appearance at the inquiry next Monday loomed as an even bigger event.

"Better late than never," Archbishop Hart said, explaining the difficulties of trying to defrock a paedophile priest.

Yet it seems terribly unjust - in an exercise filled with tales of injustice - that this inquiry came too late to be graced with the presence of Archbishop Little.