AUSTRALIA
The Guardian (UK)
David Marr
theguardian.com, Monday 24 March 2014
After a time, the novelty of seeing a cardinal in the witness box wears off. He is just a man under questioning. And it is an ordinary sight, at times so ordinary.
George Pell’s memory fails him like any other witness in trouble. He struggles to recollect his part in key events. The men he depended on to handle the complaint of John Ellis against ancient Father Aidan Duggan more than a decade ago were mistaken, muddled, insufficiently informed or plain wrong.
Yes, he made mistakes himself which he admitted in a muscular way and he agreed this case should never have turned into the hugely expensive court battle it became. But let this be clear to the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse: it wasn’t His Eminence’s fault.
There are so many ways of saying yes and as Gail Furness SC, counsel assisting the commission, took him through his evidence, the cardinal used most of them: confident, breezy, grumpy, snarling and a perfunctory “Ahhah” through shut lips.
“Does ‘ahhah’ mean yes?” asked the commissioner, Justice Peter McClellan. It did.
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