Vatican confirms Francis did not renew terms of Burke, Pell on worship congregation

Joshua J. McElwee
National Catholic Reporter
November 22, 2016


The Vatican office that handles affairs relating to the Catholic church's liturgical practices has confirmed that Pope Francis has decided not to renew the terms of several of its bishop-members, many of whom are known for preferring a more traditionalist practice of liturgy.

Francis had appointed 27 new bishops to serve as members of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments on Oct. 28. But the announcement of the appointments did not make clear whether the previous members’ terms had been renewed.

The congregation has now posted a full list of its current membership on its website. The list makes clear the pope did not renew the terms of 16 congregation members, including those of U.S. Cardinal Raymond Burke, Australian Cardinal George Pell, and the head of the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops, Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet.

Each of the Vatican congregations is made up of cardinal and bishop members, who frequently travel to Rome to help the offices in their work.

The worship congregation’s confirmation of its current membership was first reported by The Tablet. According to the online list, the congregation now has 40 members. It had previously had 31.

Among the new members of the congregation appointed by Francis are:

Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin;
Abuja, Nigeria Cardinal John Onaiyekan;
Quebec, Canada Cardinal Gerald Lacroix;
Melbourne, Australia Archbishop Denis Hart;
Paterson, N.J., Bishop Arthur Serratelli;
Archbishop Piero Marini, president of the Pontifical Committee for International Eucharistic Congresses and who previously for twenty years as the Master of Pontifical Liturgical Celebrations.
The Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments is led by Guinean Cardinal Robert Sarah. Its second-in-command is English Archbishop Arthur Roche.

Pell raises suspicions about suspension of PwC audit

Andrea Tornielli
Vatican Insider
April 30,2016

In an attempt to quell controversy, last 26 April, the Holy See issued a painstakingly thought out statement , assuring that the suspension of the contract signed with PwC for the general audit of the Vatican’s finances was not a sign of resistance to the financial transparency initiatives, which remains the aim of the reforms that are already underway. The statement issued by the Holy See Press Office called for a calm climate of co-operation between the institutions involved and the need to examine the contract. But two days later, on 28 April, the Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy, Cardinal George Pell, who signed the contract as “Manager of the Holy See”, said that he did not believe what was written in the Vatican statement, raising suspicions about the suspension of the contract with PwC being down to dubious reasons.

A statement from Cardinal Pell’s office, released only to some Australian Catholic media , “noted with interest that the so-called ‘concerns’ about the PwC audit and contract were only raised when auditors began asking for certain financial information and were finding it difficult to get answers”. The Australian cardinal and his closest collaborators seem to have dismissed the assurances given in the statement issued by the Holy See and expressed fresh suspicions already played up by many media outlets – especially in the English-speaking world. The suspicion is that the contract was not suspended because of clause-related issues but that this constituted a fully-fledged attempt to stand in the way of transparency. This is a serious accusation that looks to intensify internal disagreement and reinforce the idea of a conflict unfolding between “goodies” (Pell and the Secretariat for the Economy” and “baddies” (the Secretariat of State, APSA and more generally the Italian Curia).

The Australian cardinal’s statement also speaks of the surprise visit Pope Francis not surprisingly wished to pay first to APSA and then to the Secretariat for the Economy on the morning of 28 Apri. This is what Pell wrote, mentioning only the visit to his own dicastery: “Pope Francis yesterday paid a visit to Cardinal George Pell and the office of the Secretariat for the Economy and all staff. At the meeting, which lasted an hour, the Holy Father said he fully supported their work and re- emphasised the ongoing need for transparency in continuing with their reforms. He also repeated the need for outside or external professional inclusion and assistance. The statement also confirmed that Cardinal Pell would be continuing his current role for the full five-year term of his appointment.”

Vatican Insider has learnt that Cardinal Pell did not attend the Pope’s meeting with the Secretariat for the Economy but only made it for the final part because he had just flown in from Amsterdam. On this occasion Mgr. Alfred Xuereb, the current secretary general of the Secretariat for the Economy, played host. Francis spent some time speaking to him even after the meeting. During the Pope’s “lively” hour-long conversation with the personnel of the Secretariat for the Economy one of the questions raised was the emergence of two groups within the Vatican: the new arrivals who are handsomely paid and work for the Holy See in addition to collaborating with external companies and the staff who already work there, do the same job but receive much lower salaries. The situation was previously addressed by Pope Francis in a letter sent to the Secretary of State, Pietro Parolin, dated 14 October 2015.

Finally, it is worth noting the final point, which links the Pope’s visit to the Secretariat for the Economy to the confirmation of Pell’s full five-year term. As is commonly known, the cardinal will turn 75 on 8 June 2016: according to Canon Law, all bishops and cardinals are required to step down when they reach this age. The Pope can accept and proceed with a quick replacement, as was the case with Cardinal Mario Francesco Pompedda, Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura under Benedict XVI’s pontificate. Or he can extend their period of service as was the case with the current Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, Cardinal Angelo Amato, who was born on the same day as Pell but three years earlier. He is still serving. The five-year term the Australian prelate – appointed Prefect of the Vatican Secretariat for the Economy two years ago – mentions in his statement is due to end in February 2019.

Cardinal Pell's credibility is on the line as Catholic church strikes back

David Marr
The Guardian
April 27, 2016


When George Pell dumped on Melbourne’s Catholic Education Office in March the question was: would the church strike back or hunker down behind the cardinal? On Wednesday the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse gave the answer: strike back hard.

At issue is Pell’s credit. Time and again as he has defended his record as a priest in Ballarat and bishop in Melbourne, the cardinal’s best answer to his accusers has been: my word can be trusted against yours.

That’s not looking so good now.

To recap: when Pell came to Melbourne as an auxiliary bishop in 1987 there was an erratic and violent priest called Peter Searson terrifying children at the parish school in Doveton.

He hit them. They fled screaming from the presbytery. He packed a gun. He hung round the boys’ toilet. He sat little girls on his lap during confession. He took gruesome delight in showing kids a corpse in a coffin. He stole parish funds.

Father Searson was plainly nuts, but the Catholic Education Office couldn’t get rid of him. They’d run complaints up to the then archbishop of Melbourne, Frank Little, but nothing would be done.

The headmaster of the school Graeme Sleeman gave the church an ultimatum: the priest had to go or he would. The church backed the priest. Sleeman never worked in the Catholic education system again.

Along came Pell. Doveton was in his territory. But the new bishop did nothing effective about this vicious priest despite receiving a delegation of teachers complaining about him in 1989 and another of parents in 1991.

Searson would stay in Doveton for eight more years until he bashed another altar boy whose parents went to the police. Pell was archbishop when the priest was finally sacked in 1997.

But why did he do nothing in the early years?

Giving evidence from Rome in March, the cardinal put much of the blame on the Catholic Education Office. He declared himself the victim of a coverup. He told the royal commission that when it came to Father Searson, the office had given him “no adequate background briefing on the long-term problems at all”.

Why? To protect the office, he told counsel assisting the commission, Gail Furness SC. And to protect the archbishop.

“I was a new boy on the block. I was known to be capable of being outspoken. They might have been fearful of just what line I – I would take when confronted with all the information. They were very keen to keep the lid on the situation.”

Furness called that story implausible at the time. Now four retired executives of the Catholic Education Office have come to the royal commission to describe their shock, surprise, disappointment and anger at Pell’s evidence.

“Our number one priority for the Catholic Education Office for some period of time was that something would happen which led to the removal of Searson from Doveton,” said Peter Annett, a former supervisor with the office.

“I would have thought that our staff would be completely frank with Bishop Pell and be cheering from the rooftops if he was able to do anything.”

All four men and women said the same thing: there was no conspiracy to deceive Pell, no understanding to keep the lid on the Searson scandal, and no reason to soft-pedal the ongoing crisis in Doveton.

They wanted Searson gone but Pell was no help.

These four veterans of church bureaucracy were represented before the commission by lawyers for the Archdiocese of Melbourne. They were giving their evidence with the full backing of the church.

Not that their efforts to get rid of Searson were particularly impressive. Sitting in the gallery to hear their evidence was Graeme Sleeman, the former Doveton headmaster. He ridiculed their claim that dealing with this priest was the top priority of the Catholic Education Office.

He told the Guardian: “That’s fucking bullshit.”

Even so, Pell’s accusation that the office set out to deceive him seems now to lie in ruins. And if he can’t be believed here, can the elaborate accounts of his ignorance of paedophile scandals in Ballarat be believed?

And what about, his crucial denial that he offered young David Ridsdale an inducement not to report to the police his abuse at the hands of his uncle, the notorious paedophile Gerald Ridsdale?

All the evidence against Pell in relation to his Melbourne career has now been heard. Between now and August the royal commission has to decide one fundamental question: is Cardinal Pell a man of his word?

Sydney priest slams Cardinal George Pell in damning radio interview

news.com.au (Australia)
March 4, 2016

A SYDNEY priest of 30 years has slammed Cardinal George Pell’s “appalling” performance while facing the royal commission in to child sex abuse in a damning radio interview.

Father Michael Kelly, a well-known Jesuit priest, took to the ABC airwaves to say what he really thought about the Australian cardinal who he has known for more than 30 years.

“He’s one of the best developed narcissists I’ve ever met in my life,” he told interviewer Wendy Harmer.

“He’s astonishing at the way in which he can deploy his insensitivity; he seems just impervious to human experience.”

The Catholic priest, who conceded at one point he was sacked by Pell, was very critical of Pell’s four days on the stand at the commission, where he gave evidence and was interrogated over his knowledge of systemic sex abuse within the church. But Father Kelly said he wasn’t surprised.

“I think I share the dismay and disgust of a great many people, Catholic and others, with the Cardinal’s display, and the interesting thing about it of course is it’s just made plain to the world who he is and what he’s like. This is something of international reach, but I must say I’m not surprised,” he said.

“He’s a bully. He’s just a bully. He gets exactly what he wants by standing over people, and as one priest in Melbourne said to me recently, he has lived by the sword, he’s going to die by the sword.”

Father Kelly said he agreed with the suggestion of the senior counsel assisting the commission, Gail Furness, that much of Pell’s testimony around his lack of knowledge of abuse and paedophilia within the church was “implausible”.

“He can feign a collapsed memory he can say what he likes,” he said.

“This sort of stuff has been talked about among the clergy throughout the country … it was clearly well known and much discussed in clerical circles, and if he didn’t hear it, he must have had plugs in his ears.”

Though he was very critical of the cardinal’s performance on the stand, Father Kelly said he did see positives in the events in Rome of the past few days.

“(The Vatican) can’t avoid it. The bottom line is, George Pell is global news. He’s a big man and he’s a big bully and he’s got a lot of people off side all around the place. This particular appalling sequence of interviews and discussions with the royal commission is global news,” he said.

The priest also used his airtime to praise Australian survivors of sex abuse at the hands of Catholic priests who had travelled to Rome to witness Pell’s testimony and meet with the Vatican’s third-in-charge.

“I think they’ve conducted themselves very responsibly. The question I’d ask is what’s the point in talking to Pell,” he said. The group of survivors, led by Ballarat man David Ridsdale, has since met with the cardinal.

In a prepared statement, Pell told reporters he had heard about a dozen Ballarat survivors’ stories. “It was hard,” he said.

One parent of victims is Anthony Foster, whose daughters were abused by a Catholic priest, leading to having killed herself and the other being seriously disabled. He said he was not satisfied with the meeting.

“We got somewhere. I think there’ll be some pretty damning findings about what George Pell did, but there’s still a long way to go. George Pell was the auxiliary bishop in our area, looking after the priests who did that to my girls,” he said.

We learned about Cardinal George Pell's pain, but what about the children?

David Marr
The Guardian
March 3, 2016

Four days’ evidence of knowing nothing, doing nothing, was punctuated with expressions of sympathy, but the rhetoric seemed cut from cardboard


Pity poor George Pell. He was such a sensitive young priest that even reading about child abuse caused him pain. He did it as little as he could.

“I have never enjoyed reading the accounts of these sufferings,” he confessed on Thursday. “I tried to do that only when it was professionally absolutely appropriate because the behaviour is abhorrent and painful to read about.”

Pell’s pain …

That he said this to a roomful of survivors gathered in the Albergo Quirinale in Rome defies belief. And just as incredible is the fact that Pell offered this line to clarify his earlier “very poor” words about paedophilia in Ballarat being a “sad story” that didn’t interest him much.

Was there no one to tell the cardinal what a terrible idea it was to appeal for sympathy in the face of such pain? Where were his advisers? Are they the same crew that let him argue last year that paedophile priests and their victims are like truck drivers and hitchhikers?

Character is the great subject of cross-examination. Pell has emerged from four days harshly exposed. There is so much missing.

George Pell: They didn't tell me because they were worried I might ask difficult questions

While the rape and torture of hundreds of children swirled around him, a monstrous wailing storm of blood and terror and unimaginable sin ... Pell heard nothing

He was wary and had to be. He was rehearsed and that’s no surprise. He told the little press conference on the steps of the hotel when the interrogation was all over that the most difficult moment for him in the last few days was doing his homework: “Reading the transcripts of the way the victims suffered.”

Pell’s pain …

Day after day he punctuated his evidence of knowing nothing about Ridsdale and doing nothing about Searson with expressions of sympathy for the victims of these apparently licensed paedophiles.

But there was no poetry in the man. His rhetoric seemed cut from cardboard.

Pell’s supporters say he has a good heart but is clumsy with words. That’s hard to credit after watching him for days in the witness box. He knows how to work the language. And in any case, what would be more convincing, more moving, than awkward words delivered from the heart?

He’s heartfelt when the subject is history. At these moments, Pell beamed as he swept the commissioner into the past: “The church has been going for a couple of thousand years and our patterns of organisation predate modern corporations and, as a matter of fact, are a bit similar to the patterns of organisation of the Roman Empire …”

His evidence reveals a man who has thought deeply for years about his reasons for doing so little when it counted. He was deceived of course. Then there was the pain of reading stories of abuse. But there was more, which he has worked up over time into a little philosophy of inaction.

So the commissioners heard Pell’s principles of permissible ignorance and the subtle degrees of rumour: “Some are inherently unlikely. Some are of an indeterminate nature. Some are plausible.”

Yet Pell acted on none of them. He didn’t ask. He didn’t dig through the files. He never investigated for himself. He left these ugly problems to the responsible authorities. He passed them up the line. So a priest who pulled a knife on a little girl was left in his parish because the archbishop said nothing could be done.

At times Pell seemed to be heading towards a confession, one he could never make. The sin the cardinal had to get off his chest makes sense of his life and career: it’s the sin of obedience.

“I did what I was asked,” he said, “and was happy at that time to do just that.”

Where was alarm? He was always so cool. Was this career priest ever urgently worried about the fate of these children? Where is the evidence of his human sympathies?

Time and again he claimed not to be “plugged in” to the life of the diocese of Ballarat, though he lived and worked at the very heart of the diocese. But where’s the evidence this career priest is plugged into life?

Pell is tough. He emerged from the Quirinale with a friendly and rather weary smile. “I’m a bit tired,” he told the waiting journalists. He has high hopes for the royal commission and for his own testimony: “I hope that my appearance here has contributed a bit to healing, to improving the situation.”

In Sydney the lawyers packed their bags and the survivors hugged one another.

Over the years they’ve become an oddly functional family: here is the boy who warned Pell in the dressing room, the headmaster sacked for trying to get rid of Searson, the child Ridsdale raped while his church looked the other way.

They hope Pell is finished. They’ll be back for the commission’s verdict sometime in winter. And of course Rome will have to make up its mind.

The cardinal and the royal commission: the questions George Pell must answer

David Marr
The Guardian
February 25, 2016


Cardinal George Pell is bold. Priests have told the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse over and over again that they knew something was going on back then and now regret doing little more than passing the awful news up the line.

They left it to others.

That’s not Pell’s position. He says he knew nothing – nothing while he was a priest in Ballarat about the paedophiles around him, and little about these men and their victims in his years as an auxiliary bishop in Melbourne.

He was never in the loop. No one warned him. No one complained to him. He didn’t read that letter or this report. It never came up at meetings. There’s nothing in the minutes. There’s nothing in the files.

According to the cardinal, he rose through the ranks in a state of nearly perfect ignorance while – as he now acknowledges with remorse – systematic cover-ups allowed paedophile priests to prey on innocent children.

“I certainly was unaware of it,” he told the Victorian parliamentary inquiry into the handling of child abuse by religious and other organisations in 2013. “I have sometimes said that if we had been gossips, which we were not, and we had talked to one another about the problems that were there, we would have realised earlier just how widespread this awful business was.”

But priests do gossip. Ask them. They especially gossip about each other and always have. When a priest suddenly leaves his parish, the phones run hot. Priests say that was as true in the 1970s as it is now. Presbyteries have to know what problems are coming down the pike.

Australia’s most senior Catholic, the man in charge of the Vatican’s economy, is prepared to face many difficult questions next week as he sits in a conference room of the Albergo Quirinale. Witnesses against him have already been cross-examined. Mountains of documents have been combed. In Allan Myers QC he has about the best defence barrister the nation can offer.

He will not be quizzed about current investigations by Victoria police. They lie outside the ambit of the royal commission. Questioning will concentrate on his response to the child abuse crisis in the early years of his career: as a priest in Ballarat and auxiliary bishop in Melbourne.

He will not be a pushover. Though not a nimble thinker, Pell is no slouch in the witness box. He will be prepared to deal with complex and contested evidence put to him by lawyers for both the commission and survivors of abuse.

Onlookers may find the minutiae bewildering. But behind them all lies one big question. We’ll wait and see if he has an answer. But at this point, the evidence before the commission being what it is, the question seems unanswerable: how could he not have known?

Warnings in Ballarat

Pell was marked for big things. After studies in Rome and Oxford, he returned to Ballarat as a parish priest and after only a couple of years was appointed episcopal vicar for education in 1973.

Horrific abuse was occurring in both the St Alipius primary school (almost next door to Pell’s presbytery) and in St Patrick’s College where a 14-year-old boy known to the royal commission as BWF and his younger brother known as BWG were both abused by Brother Edward Dowlan.

BWF told the commission that in 1973, terrified for his brother and unable to get the attention of the school’s headmaster, he set off one afternoon in his school uniform to find Pell. “He was well regarded as someone of a high stature in the church by the kids and by myself,” BWF told the commission. “We would often see him in the school grounds.”

He says Pell rebuffed him at the door of the presbytery on Stewart Street. “I just blurted out to Pell that Dowlan had beat and molested [BWG] and demanded to know what Pell was going to do about it. Pell became angry and yelled at me, ‘Young man, how dare you knock on this door and make demands’. We argued for a bit and he finally told me to go away and shut the door on me.”

BWF is unshaken in his recollection of the incident. But Pell never lived in that presbytery. BWF told the royal commission: “I didn’t know whether he lived there or not; for me, it was just a good place to start. “

Pell denies the conversation took place.

The following year at the Eureka Stockade pool, 13-year-old Tim Green saw the imposing figure of Father Pell in the changing room. Green was another of Dowlan’s victims and he heard himself say something like this to the priest: “We’ve got to do something about what’s going on at St Pat’s.”

Green remembers Pell asking what he meant and replying, “Brother Dowlan is touching little boys.” He recalls Pell leaving the changing room with the words, “Don’t be ridiculous.”

Green was also unshaken in his recollection under cross examination. Pell says of that changing shed warning: “To the best of my belief this did not happen.”

Dowlan was moved around Christian Brothers schools for nearly 20 years before he faced 64 charges of abusing boys – including four at St Patrick’s. He has been in and out of prison ever since.

Moving Ridsdale

By 1977, Pell was a member of the College of Consultors of the Ballarat Diocese, a group of senior priests who advised Bishop Ronald Mulkearns on the appointment of priests to parishes.

Mulkearns was old school. He simply moved paedophile priests from parish to parish as their abuse was discovered. He has since been condemned for this by his episcopal successors, Victoria police, lawyers, the Victorian parliamentary enquiry and victims’ advocates.

The worst of these Ballarat priests was Father Gerald Ridsdale who began raping children almost from the moment he left the seminary. Postings to Warrnambool, Apollo Bay and Inglewood had all ended badly after he was caught abusing children.

The Sunday Age later reported Ridsdale’s crimes in Inglewood were no secret: “It was pretty common knowledge all through the Catholic congregation, everyone you would speak to knew about it.” Eventually, Ridsdale would be convicted of abusing nine children in his brief time at Inglewood.

Pell sat on the College of Consultors meeting in July 1977 that sent Ridsdale to his next parish, Edenhope. That didn’t work out so well either. Eventually, Ridsdale would be convicted of abusing 13 children at Edenhope.

Pell was at the consultors’ meeting in September 1979 that discussed Ridsdale’s resignation from Edenhope and the meeting in January 1980 that approved sending the priest to the National Pastoral Institute in Elsternwick. Gail Furness SC, counsel assisting the royal commission, had this exchange about the transfer with Father Bill Melican, another of the priests present at that meeting:

Q. It stands to reason, doesn’t it, from what we do know, that that was to get him out of parish work?

A. Yes.

Q. Essentially, to keep him away from children?

A. Yes.

Q. And that was known to the consultors at that time?

A. Yes.

Pell was an apology the day the consultors met to send Ridsdale to Mortlake in 1981 where for most of his brief stay he lived openly with a young boy in the presbytery. Other children were abused. Complaints poured in to Mulkearns from parents, the local doctor and the nun who ran the parish school.

Mortlake convinced Mulkearns it was time to shift Ridsdale out of the diocese and out of Victoria. Pell was one of the consultors at a meeting in September 1982 when the bishop announced Ridsdale would take a desk job in the Catholic Enquiry Centre in Sydney. Even there Ridsdale kept offending.

Pell claims that in all his time in Ballarat he never learnt Ridsdale was a paedophile. At a remarkable press conference in Sydney in 2002 he claimed not to have been aware of Ridsdale’s crimes until shortly before the priest pleaded guilty to the first of 30 charges of child abuse in Melbourne in 1993.

Pell has never been cross-examined on this claim.

Last year he said he could not recollect Mulkearns raising any paedophilia allegations against Ridsdale at, before or after the meetings of the College of Consultors over all those years.

He added: “I never moved Ridsdale out of Mortlake parish. I never moved him anywhere. I would never have condoned or participated in a decision to transfer Ridsdale in the knowledge that he had abused children, and I did not do so. I was a member of the College of Consultors for Ballarat from 1977 until I left Ballarat in 1984. Membership of the consultors gave me no authority over Gerald Ridsdale or any other priest in Ballarat.”

The curia

In 1987 Pell became an auxiliary bishop of Melbourne serving under Archbishop Frank Little. In the territory of Pell’s responsibilities – from Mornington peninsula up to the Dandenongs – were three parishes run by paedophiles the subject of complaints to the church going back many, many years.

Father Peter Searson in Doveton was violent, packed a gun and terrified children. Father Kevin O’Donnell in Oakleigh was a ceaseless paedophile. Police would later call him a “two-a-day man”. Father Ronald Pickering in Gardenvale left a trail of wrecked kids across Melbourne until he did a flit to England one night in 1993.

How much Pell admits knowing about these priests is not clear. Certainly, he had none of them removed. He told the Victorian parliamentary enquiry: “When I was auxiliary bishop of Melbourne I was not a part of the system or procedures for dealing with paedophilia.”

Next week he is bound to face questioning about that. What was the true scope of his responsibilities in these years? He did not have the power to hire and fire but Catholic observers are surprised Pell would declare dealing with paedophile priests in his parishes was outside the remit of an auxiliary bishop.

Pell claims Archbishop Little kept his auxiliaries in the dark. The junior bishops sat with Little and his Vicar General on the curia of the archdiocese, in effect its board of governors. But Pell says Little kept from them details of his dealings with offenders like O’Donnell in Oakleigh.

“Archbishop Little never spoke to nobody about this,” Pell told the Victorian parliamentary inquiry. “At the meetings – what we used to call the curia of the assistant bishops – he never once raised the issue, and he never raised the issue with me personally.”

But Bishop Peter Connors, another of the auxiliary bishops in Pell’s time, has given evidence to the royal commission that “cases in my region of a sexual nature, either with the boundary violation or with molestation of a child … would have been raised at the meeting of curia.”

He is backed by Bishop Hilton Deakin, another auxiliary bishop on curia in these years. Deakin has given evidence that the curia and other church committees on which Pell sat examined, among other cases, that of Searson whom he described as “the most despicable man I’ve ever met in my life”.

Doveton

This raw housing commission parish had seen a number of bad priests but Searson was the worst. The church had been dealing with complaints about the man for 30 years. He was clearly and profoundly disturbed, erratic and violent. He stole parish funds. He hit altar boys and hung round their toilet block at the little parish school. Children fled his presbytery screaming.

Pell told the Victorian parliamentary inquiry: “This is one case where we consistently tried to do everything right.”

The headmaster of the school begged for Searson to be removed. The church removed the headmaster. A delegation of teachers came to Pell in 1989 begging him to remove Searson. Nothing happened.

The priest’s behaviour grew more extreme. A little girl claimed he sat her on his knee for confession and she felt his erection pressed against her. Her parents didn’t go to the police.

Pell claims the church was “unable to pin anything on the man”. This was despite investigations by the police, the Catholic Education Office and lawyers hired by the church – though the lawyers weren’t asked to dig out the facts but “evaluate what was done and whether it was done properly.”

A second delegation came to Pell in 1991 to warn him, in the words of one of the teachers “of the danger to children”. But Pell remembers them merely complaining “in general terms” that the priest was “extremely difficult to deal with and disliked by parents, staff and children”.

But he took the matter to the curia and Little directed him to have a talk to the priest. “It was,” Pell reports, “a most unpleasant conversation.” And that was that – despite evidence to the royal commission by Deakin of highly detailed written accounts of Searson’s appalling behaviour reaching the church at this time.

Pell did not fire the priest on becoming archbishop. Indeed, he jumped to his defence one night at the troubled parish of Oakleigh, the scene of O’Donnell’s depredations. When parishioners raised Searson’s name, the new archbishop snapped: “It’s all gossip and I don’t listen to gossip.”

About this time Searson bashed an altar boy for giggling during Mass. His parents went to the police. A second boy corroborated the evidence of the first and Searson was charged with assault. In March 1997 the priest was finally suspended from his duties in Doveton.

Pell made the point to the Victorian parliamentary inquiry: “He has never been convicted of a sex crime. He was convicted for an act of cruelty.”

David Ridsdale

Among Father Gerald Ridsdale’s victims was his nephew David. Unaware the police were already closing in on the priest, David Ridsdale rang Pell in February 1993. Their families were friends from Ballarat. He thought the auxiliary bishop might be able to do something tactful and effective to stop his uncle.

Pell knew the priest was about to be charged. The church was going all out in his defence. He would have the church’s solicitors at his disposal and a shrewd, senior criminal barrister. Pell would walk him to court. No Melbourne priest accused of paedophile abuse before or since would have such backing.

David Ridsdale has never wavered in his account of his conversation with Pell. He says, the auxiliary bishop asked: “I want to know what it will take to keep you quiet.” Ridsdale says he replied: “Fuck you and fuck everything you stand for.”

He immediately told his sisters, “The bastard tried to offer me a bribe.” And then rang the police. Gerald Ridsdale was charged the following day with the first of what would be hundreds of charges involving up to 78 victims. At this rate he will die in prison.

More ink has been spilled on this telephone conversation than perhaps any other incident in Pell’s career. Pell has repeatedly denied he offered young Ridsdale a bribe and repeatedly asserted his caller mistook his pastoral intentions.

Last year, Pell broke with the church’s legal team in order to cross-examine a handful of the witnesses against him. Chief among these was David Ridsdale. But he was unshaken by the questioning of barrister Sam Duggan.

“I want to suggest that this conversation that you have recorded here never happened,” Duggan said. “No, utterly,” replied Ridsdale. “That is as clear to me as the first time my uncle forced me onto his penis. These are things that stick. They changed my life.”

Troublesome priests

Pell became archbishop of Melbourne in July 1996 and set about addressing the scandals of abuse in his archdiocese by establishing a church commission he called the Melbourne Response.

He and his supporters advance this as proof that Pell was championing the cause of victims. Perhaps, but the then premier of Victoria, Jeff Kennett, had threatened him with a royal commission by if he didn’t put the church’s house in order.

His response offered investigation and counselling but – unlike the response soon implemented by the Catholic church in the rest of Australia – set low, capped limits on payouts to victims. It would save his archdiocese many millions of dollars.

The royal commission has already quizzed Pell about the Melbourne Response. Next week he may be quizzed about other aspects of his conduct as archbishop of Melbourne, particularly his failure to dismiss – or break ties with – a number of questionable priests.

There was Searson who took months to fire, and Father Barry Robinson who had fled Boston rather than prove – as he claimed – that the boy he was having sex with was over the age of consent. Pell gave him a Melbourne parish where he served – apparently blamelessly – until the Boston Globe broke his story in 2004.

And then there was Ronald Pickering. Everyone knew Pickering drank and had a vile temper, but he put on a fine mass with lots of bells, smells, Latin and children’s choirs. The choir and the altar were his hunting ground.

Genevieve Grant, a young teacher at St James Primary School, says she tried to warn Pell about Pickering in 1989. He says: “No teacher spoke to me alleging sexual improprieties by Father Pickering on students.”

Four years later Pickering disappeared one night from his parish after, according to the Age, “a senior person in Victoria’s Catholic hierarchy” tipped him off that one of his victims was about to sue.

Pickering hid in England. The Melbourne archdiocese seems never to have investigated allegations that came to light about Pickering. The Catholic Insurance Office could never get hold of him. Every month, Pell paid the fugitive the modest stipend of a retired priest.

“I was obliged in canon law to do that,” he told the Victorian parliamentary inquiry. “And I did that.” But his successor Archbishop Denis Hart took a different view. He immediately stopped the payments. Pickering died in England in 2009.

Pell returns to the box

It will be late night in Rome when Pell gives his evidence next week. This was his choice. He will be on the far side of the world but sitting with a contingent of survivors in a four-star hotel outside the Vatican walls.

This is the royal commission’s last chance to make sense of the confused and often contested accounts of Pell’s handling of the paedophile crisis in his church. And Pell knows that however much his word may count within his church, the commission has already shown a degree of scepticism about this testimony.

And if Pell expresses, as he is bound to express, his profound regret at the inaction of the hierarchy in Australia during his long career that saw him rise to one of the highest offices in his church, the commission might ask him a simple question: if you wanted to protect children and those around you would not act, why didn’t you call the police?

Vatican finance boss George Pell taunted over 'cowardice'

BBC
February 18, 2016


A provocative song and a public drive to raise funds to send child sex abuse victims to the Vatican have sparked fresh controversy around Australia's most senior Catholic, writes Trevor Marshallsea.

In 2014, Cardinal George Pell, the Archbishop of Sydney, was summoned to Rome to become chief of the Vatican's finances, a new position created by Pope Francis in the wake of scandals at the Vatican Bank.

But Cardinal Pell left another scandal behind him, and the anger over widespread sexual abuse of children by members of the Catholic clergy continues to rage in Australia.

The cardinal was once again under fire this week over his refusal, on medical grounds, to return home to front the Royal Commission which is investigating how various institutions responded to the child abuse allegations.

'Come home, Cardinal Pell'

Tall and imperious, seen as aloof and arrogant by detractors, the 74-year-old has repeatedly faced allegations from abuse victims of a cover-up. These include that he was involved in moving notorious paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale around parishes rather than reporting him, and that he attempted to bribe one of the victims of the now jailed priest to keep quiet.

Cardinal Pell, who studied at Oxford and was a promising Australian Rules footballer in his youth, has repeatedly denied all allegations, while expressing regret for abuse victims.

The cardinal is not facing any criminal charges, but critics say the publicity surrounding abuse which happened on his watch has made his Vatican position untenable.

It was a biting satirical song from Tim Minchin, one of Australia's best known comedians, that propelled Cardinal Pell's refusal to return to Australia back into headlines this week.

Minchin calls the cardinal a litany of names, among them "coward" and "pompous buffoon". He ends by challenging Cardinal Pell to come home, if not "by a sense of moral duty", then perhaps to "sue me".

The lyrical assault was criticised by some. Jesuit priest and human rights lawyer Father Frank Brennan told broadcaster ABC that openly mocking a key witness risked turning the commission into a laughing stock, which would damage victims.

But the song was well-received elsewhere and has been viewed more than 400,000 times on YouTube. All proceeds from it are being donated to a public funding drive that aims to send up to 15 witnesses, including abuse victims, to watch Cardinal Pell's testimony in Rome.

That funding drive, launched by presenters from Australian television show The Project, has now raised more than A$175,000 ($125,000; £87,000).


Pell responds

The cardinal was moved to hit back, saying there had been "a great deal of incorrect information".

"Cardinal Pell has always helped victims, listened to them and considered himself their ally", said a statement released by his office on Thursday. "As an archbishop for almost 20 years he has led from the front to put an end to cover-ups, to protect vulnerable people and to try to bring justice to victims."

"The cardinal is anxious to present the facts without further delays. It is ultimately a matter for the royal commission to determine the precise arrangements for the provision of evidence by the cardinal in Rome."

The cardinal has already been before the commission twice, appearing first in person regarding a single case of abuse in Sydney, and then giving evidence by video link from Rome into a second Melbourne matter.

Then last June he was called to give evidence a third time at hearings in Ballarat, a city of 100,000 people just outside Melbourne that was allegedly a hotspot of Catholic church sexual abuse.

Explosive allegations have arisen from the city where Cardinal Pell was a priest from 1973-83, at one stage living in a presbytery with Ridsdale. The cardinal initially said he would be willing to attend the commission, but later his lawyers said he was too unwell to fly to Australia due to a heart condition.

Commission chair Justice Peter McClellan in December rejected a bid that Cardinal Pell be allowed to give evidence via video link and said he should testify in person, comments which drew applause from victims at the commission hearing.

But last week Justice McLennan bowed to further medical evidence from lawyers. The cardinal is slated to begin three days of evidence by video link on 29 February.

Despite Minchin's taunts of cowardice, Cardinal Pell's critics are not expecting to see him back in Australia anytime soon.

Cardinal Pell rejects conservative call for a walkout at Synod of Bishops

John L. Allen, Jr.
Crux
October 16, 2015


Despite an online petition calling on prelates “faithful to Christ’s teaching” to abandon the 2015 Synod of Bishops on the family, due to perceptions of a “pre-determined outcome that is anything but orthodox,” one of the summit’s most outspoken conservatives says “there’s no ground for anyone to walk out on anything.”

Australian Cardinal George Pell, who heads the Vatican’s Secretariat for the Economy, told Crux on Friday that by the midway point of the Oct. 4-25 synod, concerns about stacking the deck circulating in some quarters have “substantially been addressed.”

The online petition calling for a walkout, which can be found at change.org, has garnered roughly 2,300 signatures in two days.

It asks any bishop alarmed by the prospect of progressive changes to Church doctrine to “do his sacred duty and publicly retire from any further participation in the synod before its conclusion,” and suggests that Pope Francis is responsible for promoting “confusion and scandal.”

Pell was among roughly a dozen cardinals who signed a letter to Francis at the beginning of the synod raising doubts about the process, but he says reassurances have been given by Vatican officials that the final result “will faithfully present the views of the synod.”

Among other things, Pell said that Italian Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, the synod secretary, has stated from the floor of the synod hall that voting on a final document will take place “paragraph by paragraph,” providing a clear sense of where the bishops stand on individual issues.

He also said that members of a drafting committee for the final document have vowed to be true to the content of the synod’s discussions, rather than using the text to promote their own views.

“That’s all we want, for whatever the synod says, whether it’s good, bad, or indifferent, to be represented,” Pell said.

“That’s in the long-term interest of everyone, because no matter how it might turn out, people want to feel that the bishops got to that situation fairly,” he said.

Asked if he feels the synod now has a level playing field, Pell said it’s “level enough.”

Overall, Pell said he believes the synod is making solid progress.

“I think a lot of good work has been done on the first two parts of the document,” he said, referring to a working text that’s the basis for synod discussions. “I think there’s generally a good atmosphere in the synod.”

Pell also said that he believes the information flow this time is an improvement on the October 2104 edition of the Synod of Bishops, when there were charges by conservatives that Vatican briefings presented a selective vision that generally favored progressive positions.

“Both sides of the story are getting out this time, I think,” he said.

“In terms of the [synod participants] who are briefing the media, I think they’re getting a mix of left, right, and center …. it’s better than it was the last time, anyway,” Pell said.

Pell said that he believes the final report must deal with sensitive issues, such as proposals to allow divorced and civilly remarried Catholics to receive Communion, even if there’s no clear consensus among the bishops.

“I don’t think we’ll be in that position,” he said, suggesting that opposition to those proposals represents a strong majority in the synod.

“But even if it actually is 50/50 on some significant point, I think the Catholic world has to know that,” Pell said.

Vatican briefers repeatedly have told reporters that a decision on whether to release the synod’s final document is up to the pope. Pell said he believes it should be released, among other things because it’s destined to leak out anyway.

“I think no matter what happens, it will be public,” he said

Wuerl disputes claims of synod manipulation

Christopher Lamb
The Tablet
October 12, 2015


A prominent cardinal has challenged claims that the synod is being manipulated describing the process as “the most open” he has attended.

Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the Archbishop of Washington and a member of the synod’s governing council, was responding to the leaking of a letter sent to the Pope, signed by a number of cardinals, which claimed the synod processes were designed to “facilitate predetermined outcomes.”

Speaking to The Tablet today the cardinal said: “I’m not seeing this manipulation they are talking about. I’ve been at synods since 1990 and this is the most open synod I’ve ever been at.”

He went on: “I don’t know how you manipulate 13 language groups and 13 moderators and 13 relators and 250 people talking. How do you manipulate that so it comes out with what you want it to say? I just cant make sense of that. But if you begin with that lens, and you see everything through that lens then you can see manipulation, intrigue, conspiracy anywhere. I just don’t see it.”

A report by Italian Vatican journalist Sandro Magister said 13 cardinals signed the letter which was presented to Francis by Cardinal George Pell. However four signatories have denied they signed it and Cardinal Pell later issued a statement saying there were errors in the letter reported and the signatories. He stressed, however, that “there is no possibility” to change the doctrine preventing the divorced and remarried from receiving communion.

Vatican seeks to quell talk of letter to pope on family

Nicole Winfield
Associated Press
October 13, 2015

The Vatican spokesman on Tuesday denounced the leak of a private letter to Pope Francis by conservative cardinals complaining about the way his big family meeting is being run. But he reminded those responsible that the meeting procedures are set and that they're duty-bound to stick with them.

Spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi sought to end discussion about the latest controversy to roil Francis' synod on the family after an Italian journalist published the letter Monday and named 13 cardinals who purportedly signed it.

Four of those said they never signed it. But the Vatican's finance manager, Cardinal George Pell, effectively confirmed he was behind the initiative by fellow conservatives to bring complaints straight to the pope about a perceived lack of openness in the synod process that they felt would create "predetermined results."

The letter, written in English, said the working document for the meeting was problematic and so was the drafting committee for the final document, since its members were appointed by the pope, not elected by the synod's 270 members.

And the letter warned if the synod muddied church teaching about marriage, the Catholic Church risked going the way of "liberal" Protestant churches which, according to the letter, had collapsed because they had abandoned "key elements of Christian belief and practice in the name of pastoral adaptation."

Pell has been at the forefront of conservative resistance to attempts by liberals at the synod to find wiggle room in the church's ban on giving Communion to Catholics remarried outside the church. Catholic teaching holds that without an annulment, these Catholics are committing adultery and cannot receive the sacraments.

Lombardi said Tuesday that Francis had already responded to the complaints and that it wasn't unusual for there to be "observations" and doubts about new procedures for a synod.

"But once they have been established, the (synod fathers) should commit themselves to putting them into practice in the best possible way," Lombardi said.

He said the synod process was going along smoothly in a positive atmosphere and even some of the purported signatories of the letter were moderators for their discussion groups, a sign even they were committed to the process.

Australian bishop testifies on prevalence of child sex abuse in church

Kieran Tapsell
National Catholic Reporter
September 10, 2015

Dying of cancer, Bishop Emeritus Geoffrey Robinson appeared Aug. 24 before the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse to testify to the prevalence of child sexual abuse in the church.

He painted a sad picture of a brave and lonely Sisyphus with his band of bishops in tow, pushing a boulder with a reasoned response to the crisis up the Vatican Hill, only to have it pushed back by popes and cardinals who had no idea about the issue and a blindness about the incapacity of canon law to deal with it.

"However great the faults of the Australian bishops have been over the last 30 years, it still remains true that the major obstacle to a better response from the church has been the Vatican," Robinson told the commission. Most of the Roman Curia saw the problem as a "moral one: if a priest offends, he should repent; if he repents, he should be forgiven and restored to his position. ... They basically saw the sin as a sexual one, and did not show great understanding of the abuse of power involved or the harm done to the victims."

Robinson entered the seminary at 12-years-old, was ordained a priest, and became a canon lawyer and then auxiliary bishop of Sydney. In 1996, when revelations of clergy sexual abuse of children in Australia had reached a crescendo, the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference appointed him to find a solution. In 2004, he resigned as auxiliary bishop of Sydney after concluding that the church's response was still inadequate.

"I eventually came to the point where I felt that, with the thoughts that were running through my head, I could not continue to be a bishop of a church about which I had such profound reservations," Robinson wrote in a 2008 book Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church. "I resigned my office as Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney and began to write this book, about the very foundations of power and sex within the church."

He wrote books and went on lecture tours, calling for radical reforms within the church, and in the process lost and gained many friends.

He quickly came to the conclusion after his appointment by the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference to draw up a protocol to deal with child sexual abuse in 1996, that canon law was so inadequate for cases of sexual abuse that it would be a sham to use it. "We would have to invent something of our own," he told the Royal Commission.

Prior to 1983, when he was consulted by the Vatican about a new draft of the Code of Canon Law, he found the words "pontifical secret" stamped over the document. He complained that if he were to give a reasoned response, he needed to discuss it with colleagues. He was told: "Just don't give it to the media."

In 1996, Robinson devised a protocol called "Towards Healing," a system that was "outside, and indeed contrary to canon law." In the first draft, he required these crimes to be reported to the police as the police were not the media. Pope Paul VI's instruction, Secreta Continere of 1974, imposes the pontifical secret over allegations of clergy sexual abuse of children and contains no exception for reporting to the police. The barrage of statements by senior Curia figures from 1984 to 2002 made it abundantly clear that bishops should not report these allegations to the police.

But that was not the only conflict that "Towards Healing" had with canon law. It had its own system of investigation, and clergy could be placed on permanent "administrative leave." None of this complied with canon law.

In his perceptive notes of the meeting in the Vatican in April 2000 to discuss child sexual abuse, Robinson wrote that the members of the Roman Curia showed an "an overriding concern to preserve the legal structures already in place in the Church and not to make exceptions to them unless this was absolutely necessary."

He told the Commission how Italian Archbishop Mario Pompedda told the delegates how they might get around canon law, but he did not want a law that he had to get around. He wanted one he could follow, but "they never came up with it." Robinson came away from that meeting knowing that the Australian bishops had no choice but to continue to go it alone, irrespective of what the fall out might be.

The extent to which he and the other Australian bishops were prepared to do that is starkly illustrated in the minutes of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference of Nov. 28, 2002, where they resolved to disobey Pope John Paul II's 2001 Motu Proprio, Sacramentorum Sanctitatis Tutela, which required all complaints of child sexual abuse to be referred to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith which would then instruct the bishop what to do. They would only refer those cases where there was no admission by the priest that the abuse had occurred. Robinson told the Commission that the purpose behind that was to avoid being told by Rome what to do with those priests who admitted the abuse. That decision was well justified given the figures presented to the United Nations by the Vatican that only one third of priests against whom credible allegations of child sexual abuse had been made, have been dismissed. The claim that the Vatican has a policy of zero tolerance is pure spin.

This defiance of canon law was never going to last. Patrick Parkinson, professor of law at Sydney University, appointed by the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference to review "Towards Healing," pointed out the problems of a local protocol that conflicted with canon law: priests permanently removed from the ministry simply appealed to Rome which ordered their reinstatement. The bishop had to comply or be sacked. Robinson told the Commission that "Towards Healing" was initially successful because a number of priests accepted that they could not continue to work as a priest, but "it later fell down because both sides changed." Priests started to defend themselves with canon lawyers, and the victims went to civil lawyers.

Robinson was very critical of Pope John Paul II for a lack of leadership on this issue, and particularly his imposition in 1983 of a five-year limitation period that effectively meant that there could be no prosecution of priest paedophiles under canon law because their crimes had been "extinguished." Prior to 1983, there was no limitation period for these crimes. After 1983, if a child was abused at the age of 7, and did not complain by the age of 12, there was no possibility of dismissing the priest under canon law.

Figures presented to the Commission indicate that in Australia, the limitation period meant that only 3 percent of accused priests could be dismissed, and that figure only increased to 19 percent with the extension of the period to 10 years from the 18th birthday of the victim in 2001. Robinson said the church has still not had the appropriate leadership on child sexual abuse from Pope Benedict XVI and not even from Pope Francis.

Robinson also criticized Australian Cardinal George Pell for refusing to join the other Australian bishops in adopting the "Towards Healing" protocol. Pell was party to the two-year consultations leading up to its adoption in November 1996, but, without reference to anyone, announced he was setting up his own system, the "Melbourne Response," and then claimed he was the first in Australia to do something about clergy sexual abuse. Apart from accusing Pell of destroying a unified response from the Australian bishops, Robinson said he was an "ineffective bishop" for having lost the support of the majority of his priests who wished for him to be transferred somewhere else. Their wish was fulfilled. He is now in charge of the Vatican finances.

A reading of the many documents tendered to the Royal Commission provides even more evidence that the Vatican's all but useless disciplinary system caused far more children to be abused than would otherwise have occurred. Robinson fought the good fight, but was ultimately defeated and resigned, exhausted.

In the end, the Australian bishops abandoned the courage they displayed under his leadership, and followed the lead of Pope Benedict XVI who, in his 2010 Pastoral Letter to the Catholics of Ireland, ignored the Murphy Commission's criticisms of canon law, and blamed the Irish bishops for failing to follow it. In submissions to the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry and to the Royal Commission, the Australian bishops ignored what they knew of canon law's failings, and blamed their predecessors for making "terrible mistakes" when their predecessors were demonstrably complying with canon law.

Australia has a peculiar cultural habit of creating heroes who struggle in vain, and are defeated -- from the bushranger, Ned Kelly to the soldiers who were massacred at Gallipoli in the First World War. The Catholic church needs some heroes. Robinson, now terminally ill, is one of them.

Vatican in middle of war of words between cardinal and abuse survivor

Stephanie Kirchgaessner
The Guardian
June 5, 2015


George Pell has always courted – some say relished – controversy. From the time the staunchly conservative Australian cardinal suggested that sex abuse had never been a systemic problem in the Catholic church, to his refusal in the past to grant communion to gay Catholics – saying God did not make “Adam and Steve” – Pell’s uncompromising style has ruffled feathers.

Now Pell – a senior official in charge of church finances – is embroiled in a bruising fight of a different sort: one that has pit him against a layman, Peter Saunders, who was handpicked by Pope Francis last year to help rehabilitate the church following years of sex abuse scandals and cover-ups.

This week Saunders claimed in an interview in Australia that Pell’s allegedly “callous” past treatment of sex abuse victims was “almost sociopathic”.

In response, Pell – who has vehemently denied allegations that he once sought to bribe an abuse victim in return for his silence, among other cover-up allegations – said he would seek advice on legal action against Saunders, who is a survivor of sex abuse and a member of the pope’s commission on abuse in the church. Pell has previously apologised to victims of clergy sex abuse for the pain they endured.

The loaded exchange occurred after witnesses spoke out against Pell at a hearing before an Australian royal commission on child abuse. Claims that Pell ignored or sought to silence allegations of abuse are more than a decade old. Pell has denied all of the claims and was summoned to testify at the next hearing by the royal commission. A date has not yet been set.

On Thursday Australia’s Catholic archbishops issued a statement backing Pell as a “man of integrity who is committed to the truth and to helping others, particularly those who have been hurt or who are struggling”.

The Vatican, which rarely intervenes in such matters, has issued two statements since the fight broke out. In the first, it emphasised that Saunders was not speaking in his capacity as a member of the pope’s commission. The second, from the papal abuse commission, added that it was important for people in the position of authority to respond to claims of abuse “promptly, transparently and with the clear intent of enabling justice to be achieved”.

Jimmy Burns, the author of an upcoming biography on Pope Francis, said: “There seems to be two arms of the Francis machinery in conflict. Also, there is an element of administrative dysfunctionality at work. It shows the kind of real challenge the pope is facing in terms of reforming and restructuring the Vatican.”

He said the church’s legacy of sex abuse was the critical issue in how the church is perceived from the outside. “Saunders is a man who is of considerable integrity. He is not someone who can simply be dismissed by the Vatican,” Burns added.

John Allen, a veteran Vatican reporter and associate editor at the website Crux, said: “This is just kind of who George Pell is. He’s a back-alley bruiser. Everywhere he goes he has made enemies, but you will never find a man with more loyal friends.”

Among Pell’s allies, Allen noted, are English-speaking cardinals and bishops including Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York.

Pope Francis has tended to stand by officials if they are publicly under attack and there are no signs that he is backing off from his support of Pell. If he were to do so, it would mean undermining a man he has personally charged with tackling another crucial issue of his papacy: Vatican financial reform. In that, too, Pell faces serious challenges.

The Australian strongly backed a proposal floated last year that would have transformed the Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR) – the Vatican bank – and created Vatican Asset Management (VAM), a company that would hand control of the assets to outside managers. The grand vision of Pell and others who supported the idea was that it would create a massive “Catholic fund”, with dioceses contributing their assets from all around the world, said one insider familiar with the plans.

When the IOR’s board disagreed, Pell swept them aside and established a new board. He also ushered in a new president, Jean-Baptiste Douville de Franssu. But people familiar with the matter say the proposal was rejected by the pope and the cardinal’s commission, who were charged with reviewing the idea.

“There was an internal backlash that had to do with the impression that Pell has accumulated too much power around himself and that he was setting himself up as a tinhorn dictator,” said Allen.

A spokesman for the secretariat for the economy – Pell’s office – denied that the pope had rejected the VAM proposal and said it remained “in the mix”. “It may have been delayed but not set aside,” he said.

Internal Vatican frustration with Pell seemed evident after an article this year in the Italian magazine L’Espresso, citing leaked documents, detailed half a million euros in expenses claimed by Pell’s office. A spokesman for the cardinal defended the expenses and said they reflected one-time costs.

Observers say Pell is not the only man who has been caught in a difficult position. When Saunders and another abuse survivor, Marie Collins, were appointed to the papal commission on abuse, the move was viewed with scepticism by victims’ advocacy groups who were wary that the two would be used as mere symbols to improve the image of the church without truly reforming it.

“Most of the advocacy groups think they are being taken advantage of. Both [Saunders and Collins] are extremely savvy. I would say about Peter that he is in a tough spot and trying to figure out how to stay true to himself,” said Allen.

Asked about criticism that he was taking advantage of his position on the papal commission and was not in a position to judge individual cases, Saunders told the Guardian in an email that he was doing God’s work. “The protection of children is what it’s all about and Pell and his kind are a serious threat to that,” he said.

He added: “You should see some of the amazing messages of support I am getting from all over the world … from people thanking me for speaking out / and not being intimidated by Pell and his kind. They have no place in a church of love.”

Vatican condemns leaking of documents showing power struggle

Phillip Pullella
Reuters
February 27, 2015


The Vatican on Friday condemned the leaking of documents that according to a media report show a power struggle in the Holy See over economic reforms and excessive expenses by the cardinal charged with carrying them out.

L'Espresso magazine said it had seen minutes of meetings and emails showing mostly Italian cardinals felt that Cardinal George Pell had accumulated too much power.

Pell is an outsider brought by the pope to Rome from Australia to oversee the Vatican's often muddled finances after decades of control by Italians.

Pope Francis was given a mandate by the cardinals who elected him in 2013 to clean up after a series of financial scandals, mostly involving the Vatican bank.

Francis set up the Secretariat for the Economy last year and gave Pell, as its head, broad powers to clean up the Vatican's often troubled and murky finances and bring them in line with international standards.

"Leaking confidential documents to the media in order to stir up polemics and fuel arguments is nothing new but it is always something to be condemned and is illegal," Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said.

Lombardi said it was "normal" to have disagreements on complex financial and legal issues and condemned the article as "undignified and petty" because of its personal attack on Pell. Pell could not be reached for comment.

The magazine said Pell's department had run up half a million euros in expenses in its first six months, mostly on staff and equipment but some spending was personal, including 2,508 euros (1,822 pounds) for clerical clothing Pell allegedly bought from a well-known clerical tailor in Rome.

It also said the department had spent tens of thousands of euros to renovate and furnish a Rome apartment for use by a business manager who the cardinal brought over from Australia to help him clean up Vatican finances.

The spokesman said Pell's department was moving ahead with reforms and would in a few months publish for the first time financial statements for 2014 for each Vatican department.

The "Vatileaks" scandal in 2012, in which the butler of former Pope Benedict, Francis' predecessor, was arrested for leaking the pope's private papers to the media, alleged corruption in the Holy See, something the Vatican denied.

Vatican's finance czar reports $1.5 billion in hidden assets

John L. Allen, Jr.
Crux
February 13, 2015


Pope Francis’ finance czar today informed fellow members of the College of Cardinals that the Vatican has more than $1.5 billion in assets it didn’t previously know it possessed, although that potential windfall has to be balanced against a projected deficit of almost $1 billion in its pension fund.

The discoveries mean that the Vatican’s total assets rise to more than $3 billion, roughly one-third more than previously reported.

The cardinals were also informed that the Vatican’s real estate holdings may be undervalued by a factor of four, meaning that the overall financial health of the Vatican may be considerably rosier than was previously believed.

The disclosures at the closed-door meeting by Australian Cardinal George Pell, installed as secretary for the economy a year ago, was part of a wide-ranging overview of efforts at financial reform under Francis presented today to cardinals from around the world.

“We’re sound,” Pell said of the Vatican’s financial condition. “We’re muddled, it’s been muddled, there’s been inadequate information, but we’re far from broke.”

Pell spoke in an exclusive interview with Crux from his Vatican office.

In a speech to cardinals on Friday who were meeting in Rome ahead of a Saturday ceremony in which Pope Francis will create 20 new Princes of the Church, Pell said the Vatican’s total assets include some $500 million in various accounts that were purposefully excluded from an overall 2013 balance sheet, as well as $1 billion in assets that should have been included in that report but weren’t.

Pell stressed the discrepancies were not the result of illegal activity, but an overly compartmentalized and unwieldy reporting system that allowed significant pockets of assets to go undetected. He styled Friday’s revelations as a major step forward for transparency.

“This is the first time we’ve had a comprehensive and, we believe, accurate picture about what’s going on economically,” Pell said.

He said the clean-up effort on finances drew “massive support” from the cardinals gathered in Rome.

On other matters, Pell conceded that his clean-up operation stirred “enthusiastic opposition” earlier in the process, especially from some of the Vatican’s other traditional centers of power such as the Secretariat of State, but said much of that has dimmed.

“There was a bit of a dream world that this wouldn’t really take off, that after some huffing and puffing the world would return to way it was,” he said.

He pointed to last October as a turning point, when Pope Francis approved a set of procedures for money management intended to bring the Vatican into line with international best practices.

“The penny dropped after that,” Pell said. “People realized the game has changed.”

He also confirmed a point made recently by Cardinal Wilfrid Napier of South Africa, a member of the Council for the Economy, in an interview with the Catholic News Service: That a proposed set of statutes for the new secretariat, prepared by the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, would have hamstrung their efforts.

In early December, Pell revealed in an essay for a Catholic publication in England that his office had discovered “hundreds of millions” of Euro in previously unreported assets, although by Friday’s report to the College of Cardinals, that total had risen to $1.5 billion.

Pell told Crux that while he can certify that number is accurate, he’s not yet sure that’s everything that was previously unreported.

He cautioned, however, that those discoveries have to be balanced against difficulties in maintaining the pension fund.

“We don’t want to frighten people, because the fund is secure for the next 10-15 years,” he said. “But to make sure we can fund pensions in 20 years’ time, we’ll have to somehow put in progressively at least $800 million to $900 million.”

Pell said the actual number may be higher still, given that projections on fund performance going forward may be overly “fanciful,” given trends in interest rates.

One of the Vatican’s senior financial officials, Pell said, went out of his way on Friday to reassure elderly cardinals that “their pensions are secure.”

Pell said that providing an honest picture of the Vatican’s true financial condition is the opening salvo of the broader reform effort.

“What we’ve got to do is to get in place structures so that the Vatican is a model to others and not a scandal,” he said. “We have to make it terribly difficult to return to waste and inefficiency and some measure of corruption.”

In terms of future steps, Pell vowed that an independent auditor general for the Vatican, reporting directly to the pope, will be appointed by the summer, and that sometime later in the year, a new supervisory board will be in place for the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, another of the Vatican’s important financial centers.

Pell also promised that sometime later in the year, “for the first time ever in Vatican history,” the various departments will be providing quarterly reports comparing expenditures to budgets.

In general, Pell said, Pope Francis has supported the reform effort at every turn.

“Whenever there were things we couldn’t clean up on our own, he’s been there to support us,” he said.

Fr. Lombardi's response to Cardinal George Pell's article in "Catholic Herald"

Vatican Information Service
December 5, 2014

Vatican City, 5 December 2014 (VIS) – The Director of the Holy See Press Office, Fr. Federico Lombardi, S.J., today issued the following declaration in response to requests for clarification regarding an article by Cardinal George Pell published in the Catholic Herald.

“It should be observed that Cardinal Pell has not referred to illegal, illicit or poorly administered funds, but rather funds that do not appear on the official balance sheets of the Holy See or of Vatican City State, and which have become known to the Secretariat for the Economy during the current process of examination and revision of Vatican administration, to acquire a more comprehensive knowledge of the latter in view of the planned rationalisation. It is indeed a sign and result of constructive cooperation between the various Vatican institutions.

“Moreover, it was known and had been previously explained, also publicly by the Prefecture of Economic Affairs, that the consolidated balance sheets of the Holy See and Vatican City State, presented every year to the College of Cardinals, do not in any way encompass the totality of the numerous administrations under Vatican auspices, but only the main institutions of the Roman Curia and the State”.

[ See previous article Vatican finds hundreds of Euros 'tucked away' describing the sudden appearance of large amounts of cash. Questions immediately arise about who controlled this cash, for whose benefit was it being used, and where did it come from. ]

Vatican finds hundreds of millions of euros 'tucked away'

Phillip Pullela
Reuters
December 4, 2014


The Vatican's economy minister has said hundreds of millions of euros were found "tucked away" in accounts of various Holy See departments without having appeared in the city-state's balance sheets.

In an article for Britain's Catholic Herald Magazine to be published on Friday, Australian Cardinal George Pell wrote that the discovery meant overall Vatican finances were in better shape than previously believed.

"In fact, we have discovered that the situation is much healthier than it seemed, because some hundreds of millions of euros were tucked away in particular sectional accounts and did not appear on the balance sheet," he wrote.

"It is important to point out that the Vatican is not broke ... the Holy See is paying its way, while possessing substantial assets and investments," Pell said, according to an advance text made available on Thursday.

Pell did not suggest any wrongdoing but said Vatican departments had long had "an almost free hand" with their finances and followed "long-established patterns" in managing their affairs.

"Very few were tempted to tell the outside world what was happening, except when they needed extra help," he said, singling out the once-powerful Secretariat of State as one department that had especially jealously guarded its independence.

"It was impossible for anyone to know accurately what was going on overall," said Pell, head of the new Secretariat for the Economy that is independent of the now downgraded Secretariat of State.

AUSTRALIAN OUTSIDER

Pell is an outsider from the English-speaking world transferred by Pope Francis from Sydney to Rome to oversee the Vatican's often muddled finances after decades of control by Italians.

Pell's office sent a letter to all Vatican departments last month about changes in economic ethics and accountability.

As of Jan. 1, each department will have to enact "sound and efficient financial management policies" and prepare financial information and reports that meet international accounting standards.

Each department's financial statements will be reviewed by a major international auditing firm, the letter said.

Since the pope's election in March, 2013, the Vatican has enacted major reforms to adhere to international financial standards and prevent money laundering. It has closed many suspicious accounts at its scandal-rocked bank.

In his article, Pell said the reforms were "well under way and already past the point where the Vatican could return to the 'bad old days'."

Is the pope Catholic? Critics rally around Benedict as talk of schism looms

Candida Moss and Joel Baden
Daily Beast
November 2, 2014


Almost from the beginning, there have been rumblings of discontent about Pope Francis. While the world’s media fell in love with him, there were more conservative bishops who felt that Francis’s popular appeal came at the expense of carefully worked-out Church rituals and teachings. They saw Francis as chipping away at established Church teachings on sexuality, kowtowing to the liberal media, and acting aggressively towards conservative church leaders.

Criticism of Francis has come to a head with the publication of the final report of the Synod on the Family. Despite changing absolutely nothing doctrinally, the Synod’s recommendations for a more understanding attitude to those in unconventional family arrangements have ignited a firestorm of controversy among conservative commentators. The possibility that Catholics who had divorced and remarried without receiving an annulment might be readmitted into full communion with the Church has made many apoplectic.

Writing on his diocesan website, Bishop Thomas Tobin accused Francis of being fond of “making a mess” and stated that the Synod voting concept “struck [him] as being rather Protestant.” A funny argument, since Catholic bishops have been voting on key issues since the Council of Nicaea in 325, but that’s beside the point. Tobin seems to be suggesting that with Francis at the helm, the Catholic Church is no longer acting like the Catholic Church.

For over a year conservative Catholics have had their chastity belts in a twist over Francis and apparently, the chafing has finally grown too much to bear.

Over at The New York Times, columnist Ross Douthat, a convert to Roman Catholicism, warned that Francis’s current path could “eventually lead to real schism.” With the threat of schism hanging in the air he then encourages a kind of rebellion: “True Catholics,” he writes, must “resist” the Pope’s pressure to change the Church.

Other conservatives agree, pointing to Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, in which the upstart self-proclaimed Apostle Paul describes a meeting when he called out Peter—the first Pope—for hypocrisy. To his face and everything. According to Paul, Peter backed down. Now traditionalists want to use this as a precedent for calling out the Pope when he’s not Pope-y enough.

Benedict is hanging back for now, but there’s no doubt that he could easily become a figurehead for traditionalists harkening back to the good old days.

Proof-texting from scripture in order to criticize the Pope—now who’s being Protestant?

Conservative Cardinals seem to be getting in on the act. Last weekend Australian Cardinal George Pell unnecessarily reminded his congregants not only that Pope Francis is the 266th Pope, but also that “history has seen 37 false or antipopes.” Antipopes? Does Cardinal Pell intend to hint that Francis isn’t a true Pope? Was Cardinal Pell not there when Francis was elected?

But there’s a reason to pay attention to this particular breed of shrill complaint: there’s more than one Pope in town.

Much like an ex-partner you keep running into in the street, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s continued presence in the church serves as a constant reminder of the way things used to be. Benedict’s occasional but thoroughly traditional statements offer a painful reminder and glimmer of hope to conservative Catholics. Just last week, in written remarks read aloud at the Pontifical Urbanian University in Rome, Benedict wrote that interreligious dialogue “is no substitute for spreading the Gospel to non-Christian cultures.” Benedict’s arguments are expressed somewhat philosophically, but they are music to the ears of those tired of Francis’s soft embrace of atheists, aliens, and—worst of all—progressive social policies.

Conservatives can also be encouraged that Benedict is showing support, albeit subtly, for the previously important conservative Cardinals that Francis ousted from power. Cardinal Raymond Burke, a pro-life traditional prelate whose demotion by Francis was recently announced, invited Benedict to a Latin Mass at the Vatican. In declining the invitation, Benedict wrote that he was glad that the Latin Mass was being “celebrated by great cardinals,” a statement that many conservatives see as tacit support for those sent into exile by Francis.

Benedict is hanging back for now, but there’s no doubt that he could easily become a figurehead for traditionalists harkening back to the good old days. In some ways, he already has. In somewhat ominous tones that have rightly been called threatening, Douthat exclaims to his “true Catholic” audience, “Remember there is another pope still living!” Having warned that Pope Francis and the Synod are leading us towards schism, does Douthat mean to imply that “true Catholics” will or should stage a coup?

It’s almost as if the Catholic Church was recently baptized in a vat of irony: so-called traditionalists—the same people who insisted that liberals fall in line behind John Paul II and Benedict XVI—are petulantly calling for schism and for bucking Church hierarchy. What makes it even more absurd: Francis isn’t all that liberal. He cares profoundly and deeply about the poor, but he rarely speaks about supporting women, holds the line on contraception and abortion, and is only selectively pro-environment. In keeping with official Church teaching he believes in the reality of evolution, and in keeping with official Church teaching he believes in the power of exorcism. The Pope is Catholic, go figure.

Traditionalists appear to be buying into the media spin about which they themselves complain. In doing so they are actually bolstering Francis’s lib credentials. Perhaps the hawks should settle down, stop drinking the libertine media Kool-Aid they’ve been protesting about for so long, and act like the pro-hierarchy traditionalists they claim to be.

Kasper: some fear a domino effect at the Synod on the family

Gerard O'Connell
Vatican Insider
September 30, 2014


Not since the Second Vatican Council has a gathering of representatives of the world’s Catholic bishops sparked such interest and controversy as the extraordinary synod of bishops on the family which opens in the Vatican on October 5. While the agenda is very wide, public interest has mainly focused on how this synod, and the follow-on synod in October 2015, will address the situation of Catholics who are divorced and remarried, and whether they can be re-admitted to communion.

As is well known, Pope Francis asked the German cardinal-theologian Walter Kasper, emeritus President of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity, a former university professor and diocesan bishop, and author of a book of mercy that he greatly appreciates, to give the keynote address on the family to the College of Cardinals when they met last February to discuss this subject. In one part of that long presentation Kasper envisaged a possible way forward on the question of the divorced and remarried. The subsequent debate revealed two very different theological approaches to the question.

Several cardinals – including the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Gerhard Muller, and the Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Segnatura, Raymond Burke, have opposed Kasper’s opening on the question of the divorced and remarried, but Pope Francis publicly praised his contribution.

The temperature rose significantly, however, on the eve of the synod when five cardinals – including Muller and Burke – published a book rejecting Kasper’s line, while another Vatican cardinal, George Pell, wrote a preface to a different book in the same vein. Many in Rome perceived these initiatives as a clear attempt to close the discussion on this delicate topic even before the synod opened, some interpreted it as resistance to the Pope.

In this context, America magazine and La Nación – Argentina’s leading daily, interviewed Cardinal Walter Kasper in his apartment in Rome, September 26, and asked how he reads the opposition and the contrasting theological visions at work here, and what he expects to happen at the synod. This is what he said.

Q. There is much interest in this synod, especially regarding how it will deal with the question of whether there will be some opening towards Catholics who are divorced and remarried.

A. Yes, this interest in Church questions is a positive thing and we should be grateful for it. But the problem is that some media reduce everything at the synod to the question of Communion for the divorced and remarried people. The agenda of the synod is much, much broader and concerns the pastoral challenges of family life today. The problem of divorced and remarried is one problem, but not the only one. Some media give the impression that there will be a breakthrough and start a campaign for it. I too hope there will be a responsible opening, but it’s an open question, to be decided by the synod. We should be prudent with such fixations otherwise, if this doesn’t happen, the reaction will be great disillusion.

Q. Some cardinals and bishops seem to be afraid of this possibility and reject it even before the synod meets. Why do you think there is so much fear of a development in the Church’s discipline?

A. I think they fear a domino effect, if you change one point all would collapse. That’s their fear. This is all linked to ideology, an ideological understanding of the Gospel that the Gospel is like a penal code.

But the Gospel is, as the Pope said in ‘The Joy of the Gospel’ (Evangelii Gaudium), quoting Thomas Aquinas, the Gospel is the gift of the Holy Spirit which is in the soul of faithful and becomes operating in love. That’s a different understanding. It is not a museum. It is a living reality in the Church and we have to walk with the whole people of God and see what the needs of the people are. Then we have to make a discernment in the light of the Gospel, which is not a code of doctrines and commandments.

Then, of course, there is also a lack of theological hermeneutics because we cannot simply take one phrase of the Gospel of Jesus and from that deduce everything. You need a hermeneutic to see the whole of the Gospel and of Jesus’ message and then differentiate between what is doctrine and what is discipline. Discipline can change. So I think we have here a theological fundamentalism which is not Catholic.

Q. So you mean you cannot change doctrine but you can the discipline?

A. Doctrine, in so far as it is official binding doctrine, cannot change. So nobody denies the indissolubility of marriage. I do not, nor do I know any bishop who denies it. But discipline can be changed. Discipline wants to apply a doctrine to concrete situations, which are contingent and can change. So also discipline can change and has already changed often as we see in Church history.

Q. What did you feel when you learned that this book of the five cardinals was being published which attacks what you said?

A. Well first of all everybody is free to express his opinion. That is not a problem for me. The Pope wanted an open debate, and I think that is something new because up to now often there was not such an open debate. Now Pope Francis is open for it and I think that’s healthy and it helps the Church very much.

Q. There seems to be fear among some of the cardinals and bishops because as the Pope said we have this moral construction which can collapse like a pack of cards

A. Yes, it’s an ideology, it’s not the Gospel.

Q. There’s also a fear of the open discussion at the synod.

A. Yes, because they fear all will collapse. But first of all we live in an open pluralistic society and it’s good for the Church to have an open discussion as we had at the Second Vatican Council. It’s good for the image of the Church too, because a closed Church is not a healthy Church and not inviting for the people of the day. On the other hand when we discuss marriage and family we have to listen to people who are living this reality. There’s a ‘sensus fidelium’ (‘sense of the faithful’). It cannot be decided only from above, from the Church hierarchy, and especially you cannot just quote old texts of the last century, you have to look at the situation today, and then you make a discernment of the spirits and come to concrete results. I think this is the approach of Pope Francis, whereas many others start from doctrine and then use a mere deductive method.

...............

See entire interview at the Vatican Insider