AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald
October 5, 2013
Gerard Windsor
David Marr paints a devastating portrait of a powerbroker he sees as the enemy.
George Pell refused to speak with David Marr for this Quarterly Essay. It was not a wise move. If you have any attractive elements in your personality, and many testify that Pell does have them, an intimate conversation with an enemy can only have a softening impact.
Witness Marr’s surprising empathy with Tony Abbott in his last Quarterly Essay. Abbott had been ready to chat. There is no doubt that Marr sees Pell as an enemy. His 2000 book, The High Price of Heaven, made clear his antipathy to religion, above all in the form of the Catholic Church. Here Marr’s colours are nailed to the mast even in the miniature on the cover: Pell, prince of the church, enthroned, bathed in Renaissance gold – never a benign look for a prelate. But Marr is also a professional. In this instance, he’s the professional lawyer as much as the journalist.
The essay must be something of a dry run for the Royal Commission, and it makes very painful reading. Evil men and their orgies of destruction of young lives occupy much of its space, and it is more a forensic piling-up of evidence than any artistically choreographed revelation. Centrally, it’s an indictment of Pell for blind, evasive, flint-hearted reactions to reports of paedophilia by priests who were his responsibility. For good measure, there is also a ready summary of the case brought against Pell by two former altar boys turned criminals, a case where the outcome was a technical draw.
Has a more devastating portrait of a ”respectable”, living, non-politician, Australian public figure ever been published? Although Marr concentrates on Pell’s role in the abuse scandal, the most novel element of The Prince is a probing of the personality that began life in a pub in Ballarat.
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