AUSTRALIA
Daily Telegraph
Wendy Tuohy
He speaks in a monotone about issues that destroyed untold numbers of lives, he avoids eye contact with survivors of child sexual abuse (according to eyewitness reports from journalists), he dodges and weaves as well as Muhammad Ali ever did.
All that aside, some of Cardinal George Pell’s words to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse have been breathtakingly callous.
Yes, yesterday the world’s third most powerful Catholic official did concede the Church’s handling of allegations of child sexual abuse by paedophile priests had been “catastrophic” and that he was not there to “defend the indefensible”.
Yet today he stunned people sitting in front of him who survived childhood assaults by those very priests and was able to describe the revolting serial abuse of 53 children by Father Gerald Ridsdale as “a sad story (that) wasn’t of much interest to me”.
The gasps of onlookers were audible and understandable.
Does this man still not get the pain, hurt, grief and anger still fresh in the hearts of victims, their families and supporters — a whole town — as a result of such insidious violations?
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