The White Lily (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thewhitelily) wrote2017-06-29 12:23 pm
thewhitelily) wrote2017-06-29 12:23 pm
Come home, Cardinal Pell
Breaking News: the Victorian police are going ahead with charging Cardinal George Pell with numerous serious sex offense against up to ten minors, including rape.
Pell is Australia's most senior Catholic and, being in charge of the church's finances, is considered the world's third most senior. He did not return home from the Vatican last year to provide evidence to the Royal Commission on his knowledge of and involvement in the systematic cover-up of sex offences within the Australian Catholic church, citing ill health. Given my father flew from Los Angeles to Australia on a commercial 747 flight while in an actual coma, I find this reasoning personally uncompelling. There is no extradition treaty with the Vatican, although Pell states that, pending approval from his doctors, he intends to return to defend himself from these charges.
Tim Minchin said it best last year, and as always makes me proud to be Australian.
(If the tone seems strong, by the way, consider that Pell has been been implicated in shuffling repeat offending priests from parish to parish to escape accusations, and in bribing and silencing victims, a shocking number of whom have suicided. In his 2014 testimony regarding the institutional response to abuse allegations, he claimed that the church bore no more legal responsibility for its priests' unconscionable actions than a trucking company would if one of its drivers had picked up 'some woman' off the side of the road and assaulted her. He's also on the record as saying that abortion is a far worse moral crime than priests abusing children. He deserves his day in court, and a fair trial--but even without being personally implicated as a perpetrator, a many very angry Australians feel that 'scum' is putting it mildly.)
Pell is Australia's most senior Catholic and, being in charge of the church's finances, is considered the world's third most senior. He did not return home from the Vatican last year to provide evidence to the Royal Commission on his knowledge of and involvement in the systematic cover-up of sex offences within the Australian Catholic church, citing ill health. Given my father flew from Los Angeles to Australia on a commercial 747 flight while in an actual coma, I find this reasoning personally uncompelling. There is no extradition treaty with the Vatican, although Pell states that, pending approval from his doctors, he intends to return to defend himself from these charges.
Tim Minchin said it best last year, and as always makes me proud to be Australian.
(If the tone seems strong, by the way, consider that Pell has been been implicated in shuffling repeat offending priests from parish to parish to escape accusations, and in bribing and silencing victims, a shocking number of whom have suicided. In his 2014 testimony regarding the institutional response to abuse allegations, he claimed that the church bore no more legal responsibility for its priests' unconscionable actions than a trucking company would if one of its drivers had picked up 'some woman' off the side of the road and assaulted her. He's also on the record as saying that abortion is a far worse moral crime than priests abusing children. He deserves his day in court, and a fair trial--but even without being personally implicated as a perpetrator, a many very angry Australians feel that 'scum' is putting it mildly.)