AUSTRALIA
Crux
By Andrew Rabel
Special to Crux April 26, 2016
MELBOURNE – In general, Australian media and public opinion have not been kind to Cardinal George Pell, basically turning the 75-year-old Vatican financial czar into the country’s leading symbol of child sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church.
That campaign reached a crescendo in February, when Pell testified before a Royal Commission via video link from Rome about his time as a priest in the city of Ballarat and later as the Archbishop of Melbourne.
A satirical song by a local comedian calling Pell “scum” and a “coward” went viral, while the tone of press commentary was almost unrelentingly accusatory.
Less noticed, however, has been an emerging “case for the defense” in the Australian press, in some cases composed of people who’ve known Pell a long time, and who’ve been pushing back against what they see as a campaign of defamation tantamount to a public lynching.
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