AUSTRALIA
The Tablet (UK)
25 November 2015 by Mark Brolly
Australia’s national inquiry into child sexual abuse has begun a scheduled four weeks of public hearings into the Archdiocese of Melbourne and its neighbouring Victorian Diocese of Ballarat in which Cardinal George Pell is to give evidence for the third time.
Cardinal Pell, a former Archbishop of Melbourne and later of Sydney, has indicated that his counsel will cross-examine abuse survivors – a departure from the practice adopted by Australia’s bishops and religious orders with the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
The cardinal, now Prefect of the Vatican’s Secretariat for the Economy, has drawn criticism from survivors and their supporters for his decision but some of his critics within the Church have defended his right to defend himself over claims made against him at previous hearings.
Ballarat-born Cardinal Pell is expected to give evidence in both case studies, relating to his time as a priest in his home diocese and later as Auxiliary Bishop to Archbishop Sir Frank Little in Melbourne from 1987 until he succeeded Archbishop Little, who died in 2008, nine years later.
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