AUSTRALIA
Washington Post
By A. Odysseus Patrick
November 8
SYDNEY — Like many of their brethren around the world, Catholics in Australia have been rocked in recent years by evidence of systemic child abuse in the church.
One big question remains, though, for the country’s 5 million Catholics: Was one of their top clerics complicit?
Last month, George Pell, now a cardinal and senior Vatican official, was questioned in Rome by Australian police after public allegations in July by two former students that he had inappropriately touched them in a swimming pool back in the 1970s.
“The cardinal does not wish to cause any distress to any victim of abuse,” his office said in July. “However, claims that he has sexually abused anyone, in any place, at any time in his life are totally untrue and completely wrong.”
Pell had faced earlier allegations that he had failed to act on reports of child abuse when he was an up-and-coming priest in the 1970s in the regional city of Ballarat.
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