AUSTRALIA
WA Today
October 1, 2013
Gerard Henderson
Executive director, The Sydney Institute
According to David Marr, the influence of the Catholic activist B. A. Santamaria (1915-1998) lives on. In Marr’s view, one of Santamaria’s disciples is George Pell, the Cardinal Archbishop of Sydney, and another is Tony Abbott, the Prime Minister.
Following the publication of his Quarterly Essay last week, titled The Prince: Faith, Abuse and George Pell, Marr received numerous – and overwhelmingly soft – interviews on the ABC. On September 23 he told Philip Clark on Radio National Breakfast that ”these two old followers of Bob Santamaria, now a cardinal and a prime minister” are part of a political movement which ”is running the country in 2013”.
Earlier in the interview, responding to Clark’s claim that Pell is ”the prince or spiritual adviser to the leader of our country Tony Abbott”, Marr commented: ”It’s a dream. It’s a Medieval dream.” Not really. It’s a journalistic beat-up.
No doubt, Abbott’s swearing-in as prime minister has re-focused attention on Pell who has been a national figure since his appointment as Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne in 1996. He moved to Sydney in 2001.
Extracts from The Prince were published in the Herald on September 21-22 but there was no news flash. This gives veracity to Pell’s response to Marr’s essay. He described it as ”a predictable and selective rehash of old material” and quoted from G. K. Chesterton’s Heretics: ”A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about the author.” Sensibly, Pell declined to be interviewed by Marr.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.