So... Cardinal George Pell is dead.
I know there are a lot of Catholics on here and I don't want to cause offense with this. This is not an attack on your faith, but an observation of the man himself.
For those of you who don't know, George Pell was the third-highest ranked official in the Catholic Church. He was also a convicted paedophile who served time in jail in Australia for indecently assaulting two boys. The jury's unanimous decision was recently overturned by a single judge in an appeal, as one of the victims was unable to give evidence. (He commited suicide in 2014).
The trial was shrouded in secrecy in Australia as a result of an unheard of suppression order, but it was reported widely overseas.
As the head of the Clergy in Australia, Pell spent decades covering up institutional child abuse in the Catholic church. One particular priest, the worst of the worst, was known to commit heinous, depraved acts on vulnerable children in his care. Instead of dealing with this priest Pell moved him from parish to parish where he could continue his horrific abuse, leaving a trail of broken children and ruined lives in his wake. This went on for decades.
Pell spent years resisting investigations and reform of the church. During his own trial he fled to the Vatican and spent years fighting his own extradition. He refused to co-operate with the decades-long Royal Commission Into Institutional Child Abuse (the biggest of it's kind in Australia), and after the findings were made public he fought having to pay compensation to hundreds of victims, despite being the financial head of one of the richest institutions on the planet.
We'll never know if he was responsible for abusing the two boys or not, but he knew. He knew of everything that was going on in the church from the 1970s until today. He knew, and he chose to make it his life's work to cover it up.
And so with all that in mind I hope that on his deathbed he finally had a moment of recognition, and that ultimately, he had to answer to someone. Even if it was himself.
