Imagine if George Pell was a teacher, CEO or scout leader?

By Madonna King
Brisbane Times
May 21, 2015

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/comment/that-thinking-feeling/imagine-if-george-pell-was-a-teacher-ceo-or-scout-leader-20150520-gh67gh.html

Cardinal George Pell at the Vatican last year. Photo by Alessandra Tarantino

If George Pell had headed a company and not the Catholic Church in Australia, he would have been chased out by shareholders before he was transferred to the Vatican.

If he'd run a school, and not shown a willingness to investigate serious and systemic accusations against his senior staff, he would have had his contract ended.

Indeed, if he'd led a suburban scout chapter while a litany of crimes went on around him, he would have been stripped of all badges. 

But he escaped all of that, by being the head of the Catholic Church in Australia. And now - because of that - the Church's response to the endemic sex crimes it hid for so long is being seriously dented.

Yesterday's evidence to the royal commission - in the form of allegations against the former Archbishop of Melbourne and Sydney who now handles the Vatican's finances - is jaw-dropping.

In one instance, the nephew of convicted paedophile and former priest Gerald Ridsdale told the commission that in 1993 he told Pell about being abused by his uncle.

Pell, who then held the senior title of Cardinal, allegedly attempted to bribe him to stay quiet.

Pell has strongly denied the allegations raised yesterday.

That's the public accusation made against one of the most senior officers of the Catholic Church; that he tried to bribe a victim of a sex crime so that the matter did not slip into the public arena.

And on another earlier accusation, Father Pell (as he was then) reportedly dismissed a student's claim of abuse by Brother Edward Dowlan, telling the student not to "be ridiculous".

(Dowlan is in jail, after facing more than 30 charges of indecent assault and gross indecency for abusing young boys over more than a decade).

George Pell has said he has a very different recollection of these, and other events.

But he as now become such a central figure in the debate about how the Church refused to accept culpability that it is hard for the Church - and its congregations - to move forward, while he still fills such a senior post.

His current role, in the inner sanctum of the Vatican where he oversees finances, surely mutes the perception that the Church is genuine about trying to right some of the dreadful wrongs it has caused over so many decades.

When a senior manager becomes such a liability in other organisations or companies, good leadership and good governance urges that they remove themselves for the greater good.

George Pell has shown repeatedly that he does not understand that.

Now his inability to look into a mirror - and see himself - is hurting the work of all those who are determined to lay accountability down at the foot of every altar in every parish in the country.

But that's why the Church, itself, must make the decision for him.