AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald
Editorial
March 4, 2016
The Cardinal’s testimony has left it open for the royal commission to reject his denials and to find his explanations for ignorance of disgusting events implausible.
Cardinal George Pell showed a little more compassion this week for the survivors of abuse by Catholic priests and teachers. We welcome, too, his meeting with some of the victims in Rome.
We need to be grateful for such small mercies because the Cardinal’s testimony to the royal commission into child sexual abuse was littered with denials that beggared belief.
It was filled with the blaming of others; with qualified regret often in hindsight, rather than any admission that mistakes were made in the 1970s, 80s and 90s; and with words that betrayed a calculated attempt to avoid any concession that he did, indeed, fall short of what the community than and now would regard as caring for the wellbeing of children.
The Herald believes Cardinal Pell’s testimony has left it open for the royal commission to reject his denials of knowledge about the abuses in his midst. It is also open to the commission to find him an unreliable witness and that his explanations for ignorance of disgusting events and criminal actions are implausible. The commissioners, we believe, are without doubt entitled to find that even if he did not know he should have known and done more to protect children.
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