ROME
Sydney Morning Herald
March 3, 2016
Jane Lee
Legal affairs, health and science reporter
When it comes to responses to child sexual abuse, there have always been two George Pells.
For four days, they have fought tooth and nail for air in a Roman hotel room.
Either he did not know enough about child sexual abuse to try to stop it from happening or he did, but didn’t act.
No one expected the Cardinal to abandon the best version of himself, which he has defended for decades, including in media statements whenever his name is uttered at the royal commission.
No surprises, then, when he consistently distanced himself and the Catholic Church from the handful of aberrant church officials who he blamed for covering up child abuse in Ballarat and Melbourne.
He refuses to admit that his negligence also likely allowed more children to be abused.
At the height of his career, his only regret is that he had not been more curious, which is tempered by his belief that others prevented him from doing more.
Yet his latest testimony revealed how little weight this carries in a world that has learned so much in a few years about what Pell and those who surrounded him knew about children being sexually abused, how much children suffered and how little the church cared for them.
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