Catholic Church's Rome Guest House Is "Pilgrim Chic"
By Angus Hohenboken
FATHER Brendan Arthur takes a swig of his beer. "It's plush isn't it," he says, his gaze sweeping across the courtyard of the grand Domus Australia, a boutique guesthouse in Rome. The priest, who is residing at the former seminary while on holiday from his parish of Dandenong North, is enjoying a nightcap after a day accompanying Pope Francis on the annual Corpus Domini procession through the streets of Rome. After sharing stories and a quick cigarette with a group of Australian travellers, Father Brendan bids the party goodnight and climbs the marble stairs to his room, his soft footsteps fading below the trickle of an ornate fountain featuring a gold mosaic of Mary. This is Domus Australia, the dwelling Cardinal George Pell, Australia's most prominent Catholic, uses as his "holiday" home or his "casa per ferie". The $30 million residence has been drawn into the Catholic Church's child sex abuse scandal, with Victorian MP Andrea Coote suggesting the church sell its "splendid residence" to help pay compensation to victims. The cost of the Rome property could have been enough to provide $75,000 - the cap the church places on compensation - to 400 abuse victims, she said.
Cardinal Pell has taken exception to the "misleading" classification of the guesthouse during his appearance before Victoria's parliamentary inquiry into child abuse last week, saying his two rooms at Domus Australia, which he uses as a base while in Rome, are no palace. Cardinal Pell is due to arrive at the guesthouse on June 10, and is expected to stay for up to two months as part of a European sabbatical. While the guests perched on designer outdoor furniture agreed that by European standards Domus Australia may be on the lower end of the scale of opulence, they were still impressed. The 32-room accommodation centres around an eye-catching, cloister-rimmed courtyard and sculptural garden. Twin elevators encased in glass carry visitors to the fourth floor to enjoy a drink at the rooftop terrace bar.
And you don't even have to leave the premises to find ancient ruins: Remains of preserved 1st century pavements and buildings, exposed during renovations, can be viewed on site. A classic room in the four-star rated digs costs $218 a night and a superior room $256, while a five-course gourmet dinner with wines to match at the in-house Domus restaurant comes in at $119. For Fi Cotter and her travel companion, Macca, both from Castlemaine, the experience was worth the price tag. "The rooms are lovely," Ms Cotter said. "It doesn't feel ostentatious. "It's obviously of high quality, but it's not garish.
"It's pilgrim chic. "The rooftop is spectacular and the showers are big, which is important for Macca - he's six foot three." For Macca, size and quality is everything: "It's the biggest bed I've ever slept in, it must be four metres across." AS a former farmer, he has an eye for good workmanship and believes the renovations undertaken by the church in 2009, to prepare the former Marist student house for its new purpose, are second to none. "You look at the fittings and they are just superb, everything is superb. "There is a real finery to this place. "The other thing is the brass drains. There is about ten grand in that pipe. "Anyone would think they've built this place to be here for another 10,000 years." Both Fi and Macca have a personal interest in the sex abuse inquiry. The sibling of a mutual friend is counted among the victims. But as strongly as they feel about the abuses and attempts to cover them up, they struggle to see validity in Ms Coote's arguments. "The abuse issue needs to be dealt with and I don't know how you put a dollar figure on ruining someone's entire life," Macca said. "But I can't see the correlation here. "They have a lot more money elsewhere." Speaking the following day, Father Brendan also struggled to understand why Domus Australia should be part of a compensation deal. While he loved the buildings, fondly referring to Domus as an "Australian oasis", he echoed Cardinal Pell, saying the property was "far from a palace". "You could sell this place and get X amount of dollars for it, but for people like that it's never going to be enough," Father Brendan said. Where do you stop? Sell off St Mary's Cathedral in Sydney next? Or St Patrick's in Melbourne? "Of course there is a genuine question of justice in compensating victims for clerical abuse, that certainly has to be dealt with, but to suggest that this place should be sold off is just ludicrous." THE rector of the on-site chapel, Father Andrew James, said the purchase was a solid investment. Rooms are frequently booked out. "The funding largely came from benefactors and also the sale of a building in Sydney," Father Andrew said. "We sold a building in Sydney and bought a building in Rome, it's like diversifying our portfolio in a sense. "Cardinal Pell has two rooms here, and he visits six or seven times a year. "He is expected to stay until July sometime this time." While staff at the guesthouse were not sure of the duration of the stay either, the cardinal previously said the sabbatical would be three months, including a pilgrimage following the footsteps of St Paul through Turkey, Greece and Rome. The last, at least, two months of the stay were expected to be spent reading at Domus Australia. Lining up for the Colosseum across town, Queensland tourist Paul Sharman, who was paying $14 a night for a dormitory room outside the city centre, said the purchase of the building was just another example of silly spending. The former employee of Catholic charity Caritas said the church needed to lift its game in its response to the sexual abuse scandal. "When I started at Caritas, I was asked to sign a form stating that I would not sexually assault minors," Mr Sharman said. "I mean, that is ridiculous; that is not going to stop someone from acting."
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