AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun
WENDY TUOHY HERALD SUN MARCH 26, 2014
HEARING and reading Cardinal George Pell’s words in the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, you may wonder where his lofty role as His Eminence Catholic Archbishop of Sydney and his day-to-day vocation as a caring leader of children, adults and families intersected — if at all.
He held responsibility for the spiritual wellbeing of millions of Australians, yet his demeanour when discussing the devastation of the victims of paedophile priests — and also by church legal action — has been nothing more than clinical.
In all of his defence of the “strenuous” and “vigorous” action by his hierarchy aimed at dissuading childhood sex abuse victims from going to court, Pell has appeared via his own testimony and that of other church officials as a hard-headed strategist, an unyielding tactician and an aggressive protector of the church’s wealth. He seems to have excelled at all of those; on Tuesday the inquiry revealed that Sydney’s Catholic archdiocese is sitting on assets worth $1 billion.
But victims and their families have every right to ask, as they are doing, where is George Pell’s compassion? Where is his human empathy and, even more importantly, when will they hear his sincere and believable expression of remorse.
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