Pell in the box stays firm

Sky News
March 24, 2014

http://www.skynews.com.au/national/article.aspx?id=960809

Outside and inside the hearing room at the royal commission where Cardinal George Pell is in the witness stand, survivors of clerical child sex abuse are listening intently.

The hearing room is packed to its capacity of 100-plus and the cardinal's evidence is being broadcast on screens around the foyer of the 17th floor in the Governor Macquarie Tower in Sydney.

Sometimes, such as when the cardinal makes a statement like 'my own position is that you never disbelieve a complaint...', there are sighs.

Sitting directly behind the long tables where lawyers for the commission, the church and abuse victims sit, is John Ellis - the man whose saga of sexual and then 'legal abuse' by the church is the reason for the hearing.

Ellis, a gaunt, nerve-wracked man, has told his complex story of how as a 13-year-old he was sexually abused by a priest.

The abuse continued until he was 17 and his relationship with Father Aidan Duggan, his abuser continued into adulthood.

Ellis's life fell apart and he went to the Catholic Church for help.

In the witness box on Monday, Pell, sits above this mixed congregation.

Wearing a black suit and white shirt topped by the clerical dog collar the 72-year-old first outlined his church career in a firm voice.

He says he will start his new job in Rome as head of the Holy See's finances next Monday. He is now emeritus archbishop of Sydney.

When commission counsel, Gail Furness, takes him back to his part in bishops' conferences in the 1990s - when the Australian church began to organise its response to child sex abuse - his voice lowers.

The cardinal is back on home territory and states several times he's not a micro-manager and trusts those under him to do their jobs.

When he says with certainty that complaints received by schools are not always valid, Furness presses him to produce the data.

Some of those watching the proceedings clap.