Cardinal Pell: a legacy of shame and failure

It may be possible – remotely – as Cardinal George Pell claims, that he did not know about the crimes of paedophile Gerald Ridsdale until much later than the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse thinks he did. But if so, it must have required the most herculean effort, the most Nelsonian blind eye, to avoid something so well known that priests in Ballarat and Melbourne were gossiping about it.

But Nelson turning his blind eye to the telescope at the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801 was a matter of national heroism. Pell’s blind eye served only himself, and at a huge cost to victims, their families, and the professionals who tried to intervene.

For the young and ambitious Pell, a priest in Ballarat clearly destined for high office, knew one thing: whistle-blowers don’t go on to glorious careers in the institutions they hold to account. Embarrass the church, and you can forget about a cardinal’s red hat and a vital Vatican role.

This royal commission finding has now defined Pell’s legacy, and it is a sad one of shame and failure. There is scarcely a higher verdict possible on earth than that of a royal commission, though Pell, of course, believes in a higher one to come. The finding that such a senior prelate lied – for that is the effect of the language, if not the language itself – is a terrible indictment, especially for a prince of the church, a custodian of the Catholic faith and morals.

And even if Pell did not lie, he has exposed himself as someone who put himself and what he perceived as the interests of the Catholic Church above every other consideration. His indifference to paedophiles, and especially the deranged Peter Searson at Doveton, is appalling.

Searson went on – after Pell met a delegation of teachers complaining about him but did nothing – to damage other children, leaving more victims and distressed families. And there were other casualties, especially two teachers in the Catholic education system, Graeme Sleeman and Carmel Rafferty, who separately fought to remove Searson. Both lost their careers because they had the courage or empathy that Pell lacked.

Only the cardinal’s most intemperate supporters can brush the royal commission aside as scapegoating, although the most strident already have. As far as they are concerned, here is just another judicial inquiry that got it wrong. But Pell was not answering for the sins of the church, as they allege. He was answering very particular questions about what he knew, when he knew it, and what he did about it. And the royal commission found that his evidence was not credible and that his record was one of shameful failure.

I readily acknowledge that Pell, the most prominent Catholic in Australia, has at times served as a scapegoat, especially on social media. But that is simply not true this time. Nevertheless, I feel some sympathy for Pell for the manner in which he has become a locus for the culture wars. A younger, more vigorous Pell relished this and sought it out, but now it has overwhelmed him.

Important though he was, Pell was only a cog in the Catholic machine, and there is plenty of responsibility to spread around, as there is in most institutions the royal commission examined. But his defenders are right that he has become the public face of all the church’s failings. Many of his critics over the years, religious and secular, simply detested the very traditional Catholicism he championed. Likewise, his defenders have made him an instrument with which to lash their favoured targets, such as the ABC.

All of this comes at a high cost to nuance and balance, in which Pell is portrayed as a monster or saint. He is neither. For example, when he became archbishop of Melbourne, he did finally remove Searson.

Or take another example, the Melbourne Response, the world’s first compensation protocol for victims of clergy sexual abuse, which Pell introduced in the Melbourne archdiocese in 1996. Pell always claimed this proved his anti-abuse credentials. And it’s true, he introduced it.

But critics say it was more designed to contain and control victims, to head off the state government and to protect church finances, and that victims were often further damaged by the process. I’m certain that’s true, too. They also point out that it weakened the national response, Towards Healing, featuring every diocese except Melbourne, launched a little later. Also true.

It brought one advance, that the Melbourne Response allowed victims whose perpetrators were now dead or against whom they were unlikely to win a civil case, to be compensated, however meagrely. True, too.

For survivors of abuse who saw Pell’s jailing as vindication and who were then devastated by the High Court decision earlier this year to acquit him, the release of the royal commission report will provide some satisfaction.

Now that Pell leaves his public ministry a vastly diminished figure, his reputation ruined, it is hard not to conclude that he was the architect of his own demise, and for precisely the reasons that the royal commission identified.

Barney Zwartz, religion editor of The Age from 2002 to 2013, is a senior fellow of the Centre for Public Christianity.