AUSTRALIA
The Conversation
Michael Salter
Lecturer in Criminology at University of Western Sydney
Cardinal George Pell’s appearance at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse will do little to rehabilitate his image in the eyes of clergy abuse victims.
Via video link from the Vatican, Pell used the example of a trucking company to illustrate the legal responsibility of the Catholic Church to victims of clergy abuse. In his view, the church’s responsibility to those abused by priests is comparable to the responsibility of a trucking company to a hitchhiker raped by a trucker.
This was just one of several moments before the royal commission in which Pell’s rhetoric of concern for victims came into tension with the detached and bureaucratic manner that has characterised his response to clergy abuse over the last two decades.
The Melbourne Response
At the royal commission, Pell strongly defended the Melbourne Response, the clergy abuse compensation scheme that he established in 1996 as Archbishop of Melbourne. He described the scheme as an attempt to lessen the suffering of victims and to address their needs quickly and compassionately.
However, Pell’s statement that “money was never my primary concern” sat uncomfortably alongside his emphasis on protecting the financial resources of the archdiocese. Compensation offers were considerably lower than the likely outcome of a successful civil claim.
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