Pell's toll: Jailed cardinal's legacy remains firmly in place

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Pell's toll: Jailed cardinal's legacy remains firmly in place

By Debbie Cuthbertson and Barney Zwartz

EDITOR'S NOTE: The High Court overturned Cardinal George Pell's conviction for historic child sex offences in a judgment handed down April 7, 2020. In a unanimous decision all seven High Court judges found Victoria's Court of Appeal should not have upheld Pell's conviction. It found the evidence could not support a guilty verdict.

Like his 190-centimetre frame, Cardinal George Pell’s shadow looms large over Catholicism in Australia. The 77-year-old is now stooped and worn, but his influence remains formidable.

His name may have been erased from his former school in Ballarat, but it will be harder to scrub out his influence on the clergy, in politics and in the handling of child sex abuse cases by the church.

Cardinal George Pell leaves court after being found guilty in December of  sexually assaulting two choirboys in 1996.

Cardinal George Pell leaves court after being found guilty in December of sexually assaulting two choirboys in 1996.Credit: Chris Hopkins

Pell’s incarceration on Wednesday, after being found guilty in Victoria’s County Court in December of molesting two boys while Archbishop of Melbourne in the 1990s, has shaken the Catholic Church to its very foundations.

The finding that he had committed a brazen attack on two 13-year-old choristers at St Patrick’s Cathedral has focused an intense spotlight on the failings of the church after decades of scandal, investigations and exhortations for it to confront the scourge of child sex abuse within its ranks.

And with his influence behind the appointments of many of the church's most senior clerics, it may take many years for it to shake off his spectre.

The cardinal’s sway still spreads far beyond his cell at the Melbourne Assessment Prison, to former prime ministers including John Howard and Tony Abbott, who continue to vouch for him, and to global media mogul Rupert Murdoch as well as some of his most senior footsoldiers.

Pell's friends include former PM John Howard, whose character reference was submitted to the court this week.

Pell's friends include former PM John Howard, whose character reference was submitted to the court this week.Credit: Dean Sewell

Hours after Pell - until recently one of the Pope’s most senior advisers – was taken into custody this week, awaiting sentencing and an appeal, the Vatican announced it had been investigating the allegations against him for several months.

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Some, including a former church employee, have openly questioned whether the protocol Pell introduced in Melbourne for handling abuse cases was created in part to protect himself and other offenders from prosecution.

The Melbourne Response

Pell’s Melbourne Response protocol, developed by him for his archdiocese at the same time as the church devised a national response called Towards Healing, saw victims and their families treated appallingly, often by Pell himself, after reporting abuse.

Between 1996 and mid-2018, close to 500 victims have taken the opportunity to report abuse by around 130 Catholic perpetrators through the Melbourne Response.

The church says the process involves an investigation of complaints by an independent commissioner. If a complaint is found to be legitimate, a panel then assesses the amount of compensation the complainant is entitled to - payments are capped at $150,000. A care plan which may include psychologist's services is then established via the church’s CareLink arm.

Melbourne Archbishop Peter Comensoli, who was made a bishop – Australia’s youngest – by Pell in 2011, still considers him a friend and intends to visit him in jail.

In a wide-ranging interview with The Age this week, Comensoli acknowledged it was up to him to rebuild the profound breach of trust caused by the abuse of children by Catholic clergy in his archdiocese, which had traumatised victims and their families and in some cases alienated entire church communities.

The Archbishop of Melbourne, Peter Comensoli.

The Archbishop of Melbourne, Peter Comensoli.Credit: AAP

Comensoli conceded the church’s attitude had at times been “nearly protectionist” in the way it fought abuse cases, “by way of covering up and not believing, being defensive”.

News of the guilty verdict against Pell had prompted people to contact the church in recent days saying they too were victims of abuse, he said.

Comensoli did not specify how many had come forward this week, and said he was not aware of any having made accusations against Pell.

He was not aware of other historic accusations from Pell’s time in Melbourne, apart from those that had already been before the court: “There’s nothing in his files, and our files stop with when he finished up here.”

(There was also an investigation into allegations against Pell in 2002 that he had abused a 12-year-old boy at a youth camp on Phillip Island in 1961. The church appointed retired Supreme Court judge Alec Southwell to investigate, who said that while the complainant gave the impression he was "speaking honestly from actual recollection", he was not satisfied that the complaint had been established.)

Asked whether he would reconsider the Melbourne Response in light of Pell’s conviction and the establishment of a national redress scheme following the royal commission, Comensoli said there were elements of it, particularly CareLink, that he would like to retain.

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“But things have changed again in the last few months, when we came on to the national scheme,” he said. “The Melbourne Response is still going. But my sense is that Melbourne Response will die a kind of a natural death, in the sense that more people will take up the process of the national redress scheme.”

Comensoli said he had made a point of regularly meeting and speaking to victims of abuse since his appointment as archbishop in August.

“I think there’s a place for a ministry in the life of the church where people can walk with victims … Because victims often feel they’re at fault - 'Why did this happen to me? What did I do wrong, in terms of my relationship with God?'

“It’s letting them know that they can come back into the life of the church in a safe way.”

And he has offered, publicly, for the first time, to meet with Pell’s accuser.

“I haven’t had the chance to say this anywhere, so I’ll say it now: the man himself who brought forth his story, I don’t know who he is. He didn’t come via Melbourne Response, only through the courts. And as you know his name is appropriately suppressed. So I don’t know him personally.

“But if he wants to talk, certainly I would be open and willing and happy to sit down with him or his family.”

Comensoli said it was up to him to minister to his entire archdiocese.

“What does an archbishop do? He cares for his people. I want to care for the man who has brought his story forward. I want to care for [everyone] … one of my flock at the moment happens to be George Pell.”

He said he felt it was too soon, given any appeal had some way to go, to make a judgement on Pell’s legacy.

“I’m not making any judgements about anything at the moment. Let’s see where things go. Obviously you know that he’s a friend of mine, and appropriately if you’re a friend, you do the walk through the dark and the light.”

"It casts a shadow across the whole system": Helen Last, a former employee of the Catholic Church.

"It casts a shadow across the whole system": Helen Last, a former employee of the Catholic Church.Credit: Paul Jeffers

Helen Last, the founder of advocacy group In Good Faith and a former employee of the Catholic Church, believes Pell's conviction casts doubt on the entire protocol.

Asked about the fact that the Melbourne Response was started by a convicted paedophile, possibly with an interest in protecting himself, she says: “It changes it immensely, because it casts a shadow across the whole system and its history.”

Last has fought for years, using government, police and media, to have the Melbourne Response recognised as a harmful system.

“I believe Pell set up the Melbourne Response partly to protect himself ... It was set up to be a steely legal process by a commission who had no background in victims’ needs or care. It was designed to deflect victims and diminish their experience and protect the priest.”

Judy Courtin, an advocate and lawyer for survivors of abuse, did her PhD on the Melbourne Response, which she describes as an abusive and traumatic process for victims.

“The 500-odd people who have been through the Melbourne Response have all signed deeds of release, which gave up legal rights in the future … All of the deeds should be set aside. Because Pell has been convicted is that a stronger argument? Legally no, morally yes. Everything he did wasn’t credible.

“For victims, it’s the final nail in the coffin, the greatest of all insults, the greatest of all betrayals.”

Paul Tatchell, now the mayor of Moorabool Shire, was raped as a boy by Brother Edward Dowlan at St Patrick’s College in Ballarat. He fought back and belted Dowlan, and continued to warn others about abusers.

Tatchell says he’s sick of the focus on Pell and would rather see more done to address the problem and protect children from predatory priests and brothers.

“In terms of George Pell, what’s his legacy? It’s the last thing you do. The rest is irrelevant. Is he relevant? Not to me. To me he’s guilty and if he doesn’t win the appeal, if that’s the case, he’s just another paedophile.

“George isn’t the story here. I’ve got three grandkids, and every time I see these kids I melt. I hope that they’re protected and I hope that the system protects them. And I hope someone protects other kids.”

Tatchell refers to himself as a “bloody ratbag” who is not afraid of anyone, but even he was intimidated by Pell. “He’s the most intimidating person, and one of the most intelligent, I’ve ever met, and he’s calculating,” he said.

Power and influence

George Pell was a formidable culture warrior and extremely astute political operator who was in the right place at the right time, say those who served with him – supporters and critics.

The Australian Catholic Church had been strongly influenced by the liberalising Second Vatican Council of the 1960s but the tide was turning back, especially with the election of Pope John Paul II.

George Pell during mass at St Mary's Cathedral in Sydney, where he was archbishop for more than a decade.

George Pell during mass at St Mary's Cathedral in Sydney, where he was archbishop for more than a decade.Credit: Wolter Peeters

The new pope was eager to reverse what he saw as the ill effects of the council, and the young Pell was just emerging on the Vatican's radar. Appointed an assistant bishop in Melbourne in 1987, Pell was made a member of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – the Vatican’s doctrinal watchdog – in 1990, where he came to the attention of Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI.

Later he was appointed to the Congregation for Bishops, ensuring, in the words of retired Melbourne priest Eric Hodgens, “the appointment of tested ‘orthodox’ candidates for the episcopacy”. In Australia, Hodgens says, no bishop in the past two and more decades has been appointed without Pell’s active promotion or passive permission: “Pell became a recognised figure in Vatican corridors.”

Pell was ordained as a priest in Ballarat in 1966. He was sent to Oxford, returning, Hodgens says, “as a conservative warrior and a protege of Bob Santamaria”.

In 1996 Frank Little was pushed out as archbishop of Melbourne and replaced by Pell, though Pell denied to the royal commission that Little’s retirement was negotiated with him. As archbishop, Pell brought the arch-conservative Opus Dei to the city and remade Melbourne’s Catholic seminaries into more theologically conservative entities.

Then archbishop of Melbourne George Pell officiates at the funeral of B.A. Santamaria  at St Patrick's Cathedral in 1998.

Then archbishop of Melbourne George Pell officiates at the funeral of B.A. Santamaria at St Patrick's Cathedral in 1998.Credit: John Donegan

Five years later he became Archbishop of Sydney, and got his red hat as cardinal in 2003. In 2014 he moved to Rome as prefect for the newly created Secretariat for the Economy, where his dogged determination and ability to break through opposition made him ideal for investigating Vatican financial misdealings.

According to Hodgens, Pell’s influence was on the wane before last year’s trial.

“Conservatives like Pell still make a lot of noise in the church in Australia, but the opposing wing is larger and more pastoral. They believe that ideology is the antithesis of genuine faith. The present Pope abhors ideology – of right or left. His model of priesthood is Shepherd-Pastor rather than Defender-Warrior.”

Tellingly, Pell was never elected by his fellow bishops to head the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference, nominally the most senior post in Australia, though his close friend and supporter Denis Hart, his successor as Archbishop of Melbourne, was president for many years.

Pell was a figurehead for conservatives on social issues, a man who fearlessly and forcefully stood against what he saw as moral relativism.

One politician, who did not want to be named, said: “Pell basically ran an authoritarian hard-line operation. From the 1960s to the ’80s there was a flowering of many schools of thought, which he managed to shut down. People were forced to shut up or were driven out. He had a baleful effect on clergy.”

Heather Ryan tied ribbons to the gates of St Patrick's Catherdral in support of victims of sexual abuse by the Catholic Church after the Pell verdict was announced.

Heather Ryan tied ribbons to the gates of St Patrick's Catherdral in support of victims of sexual abuse by the Catholic Church after the Pell verdict was announced.Credit: Justin McManus

That, he said, is part of Pell’s legacy: his is the hand behind the appointment of many bishops who share his authoritarian mindset. From that flows a caste of younger priests who are far less representative of people in the pews than clergy used to be, and who adhere to Pell’s view of Catholicism. Age has removed most of the progressive priests shaped by the Second Vatican Council, through death or retirement.

Pell’s conviction on child sex abuse charges surely means his time as a culture warrior is over, this politician believes, though it is entirely possible that Appeal Court judges will take a different view from the Melbourne jury of what “beyond reasonable doubt” means.

Either way, the cardinal's legacy remains strongly in place.

The bishops of Australia may owe their appointments to Pell, but it will be up to them to determine how the church reconstructs its relationship with its flock.

Comensoli aims to do that by placing his focus on the church community, rather than the institution.

"For the rest of my life probably, the institutional church will be on the nose in Australia. I recognise that, just as institutions generally are on the nose. I think the local community, that is where the energies need to go. And to speaking to them about life and family and how do you care for the environment, or provide outreach to the poor and the broken.

"I can’t build a safe archdiocese if I’m not building safe parishes, safe schools and so on. There’s no such thing as a safe archdiocese; it’s the summation of all of these safe communities. So I think that’s going to be a fairly significant dimension and a point of difference. Because, just generally, bishops and archbishops in the past were concentrating on big-picture things.

"Maybe it’s time to concentrate on smaller stuff."

If you or anyone you know needs support, you can contact the National Sexual Assault, Domestic and Family Violence Counselling Service on 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732), Lifeline 131 114, or beyondblue 1300 224 636. Blue Knot Foundation 1300 657 380

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