THE PRINCE – Faith, Abuse and George Pell. by David Marr

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The Prince   by David Marr, reveals a cleric at ease with power and aggression in asserting the conservative prerogatives of the Vatican. He charts Pell’s response – as a man, a priest, an archbishop and a prince of the church – to the scandal that has engulfed the Catholic world: the sexual abuse of children.

The author initially explores the life of George Pell, from his childhood and family life, his time as a seminarian, through to his rise as the most senior cleric of the Catholic Church in Australia.  Pell achieves his ultimate ambition to become a Cardinal and is eventually promoted by Pope Francis to glorified accountant for the Vatican.  Pell’s obvious skill at accounting has saved the Church in Australia many millions of dollars in compensation to victims of clerical abuse via Pell’s establishment of the Melbourne Response in which victims were dissuaded from reporting to police and awarded paltry sums in compensation. This extremely effective solution would not have escaped the attention of the Pontiff which had the added benefit, for a limited time, of silencing growing numbers of victims.

Pell allowed the payouts of meagre sums to victims while spending hundreds of millions of dollars on the establishment of a Catholic university, other buildings and renovations. Pell’s treatment of the families of victims and of victims themselves is heart rending. In one case, the parent of a young victim was so distraught, they cried and berated Pell for allowing the abuse to happen and his response was : “Have you said your hail Marys?” However, by then the tide was turning.

The last few years have been very difficult for Pell, not least because of his realisation that the Catholic Church can no longer escape secular scrutiny no matter how much he has tried to shield the church and its wealth from the scandal of the sexual abuse of children. This book paints a portrait of a man with an inflated ego and an over-riding ambition for absolute ecclesiastical power over Catholics in Australia. A portrait of hypocrisy which allowed a man to sexually abuse children  while making him blind to the suffering of children and their families.

Pell was convinced that most of the world’s problems could be solved by ensuring that Catholics adhered to the rule of Canon Law of which he was an expert. In his mind, Catholics were becoming too lax in their views regarding marriage, the sins of homosexuality, abortion and contraception. He obviously did not consider clerical paedophilia a sin.

With the revelations worldwide of Catholic clergy paedophilia and homosexual relationships among Catholic clergy, celibacy has to be one of the biggest cons ever perpetrated by the Catholic Church.  “Abortion is a worse moral scandal than priests sexually abusing young people” stated Pell, which was ridiculed around the world and I believe, turned even more Catholics away from their church, especially women.

David Marr explores the possibility that Pell’s lust for power sublimates his instinctual sexual desires. He loves the pomp and ceremony of High Mass, the luxurious gowns and head gear. More compensation for celibacy and the suppression of sexual desire?  Marr writes: “Everything about this man suggests the struggle against sex has come at a terrible price. I wonder how much the strange ordinariness of George Pell began sixty years ago when a robust Ballarat school boy decided as an act of heroic piety, to try to kill sex in himself?  How much empathy was crushed along the way? How ignorant has it left him of the human heart? The gamble priests take struggling with sex is that they may live their whole lives without learning what it is to be an adult in the real world, the world outside the (Catholic Church).”

There can be no doubt that Pell’s claims of being unaware that hundreds of children suffered sexual abuse at the hands of his Catholic clergy, especially in Ballarat in Victoria, were untrue. His professed ignorance of the moving of paedophile priests and brothers around parishes following complaints by parents and teachers was laid bare by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses into Child Sexual Abuse.

In Australia, politicians and the Police force were breaking away from the power of the Catholic Church, and there is no doubt that Pell’s stature within Australia took a terminal hit. Pell’s appearance during the Royal Commission tarnished his inflated reputation in Australia and prompted more of Pell’s victims to come forward. This time police were prepared to listen and to take action.

Pell hid terrible secrets of his own. The nation’s most powerful Catholic, Cardinal George Pell, was eventually jailed  for child sexual assault. which was uncovered and judged in a “trial that convulsed the nation.” Then there are the allegations by several boys that Pell had sexually abused them, and too many of the boys had such similar stories to tell, it is difficult to believe that Pell is as innocent as he claims he is.

In recent years, thousands of cases of the sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy, particularly in Ireland and the USA were being exposed by main stream media; three harrowing inquiries held in Ireland,  the explosive documentary, Spotlight and  “the first, best exposé of how the Catholic Church covered for paedophile priests” published by the Boston Globe in early 2002.

This 3^rd edition of The Prince encompasses some relevant testimonies from the Royal Commission,  which dramatically altered the once high status of George Pell and his Catholic Church in Australia.  Marr comments on the brutal and effective questioning of Cardinal Pell by Commissioner McClellan on the bench and Gail Furness QC on the floor at the Royal Commission. This left the cardinal floundering for answers at times.  In one such round of questioning, he made the now infamous statement in answer as to whether he knew of the sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy and the consequential shifting of paedophile priests between parishes, particularly in the case Gerald Ridsdale, Pell replied: “It’s a sad story, but it wasn’t of much interest to me.”