George Pell

Finally a Catholic Archbishop has admitted that the church helped cover up the activities of pedophile priests.

Now if only more bishops would be so honest the church might be able to start to recovery from their awful legacy of protecting ratbag priests.

MELBOURNE archbishop Denis Hart has admitted the crimes of pedophile priests were covered up by former long-time Melbourne archbishop Frank Little, who dealt with complaints confidentially, kept no records and moved offending priests to new parishes.

In a three-hour interrogation by a Victorian parliamentary inquiry, it was also revealed Archbishop Hart last year warned the Vatican of the possibility of a “scandal for the faithful” if it did not defrock a pedophile priest.

Archbishop Hart also said the church would support the extension of mandatory reporting to ministers of religion, except for the sanctity of the confessional.  Read more »

Julia Gillard has come out strongly today announcing the terms of reference for a Royal Commission to look into the child sex abuse in an institutional context including crimes committed and covered up by the Catholic Church:

Prime Minister Julia Gillard said too many people have turned a blind eye to the shocking crime of child sexual abuse, as she announced the terms of reference for the royal commission in Sydney on Friday.

Ms Gilllard said that it is clear that too many children had been subject to sexual abuse in institutions and were not provided with a safe childhood.

Describing child abuse as a ”hideous, shocking and vile crime”, Ms Gillard said, ”I believe our nation needs to have this royal commission.”

Ms Gillard said to survivors of child sexual abuse, ”we want your voices to be heard. Even if you felt for all of your life that no one’s listened to you.”

The prime minister said the Royal Commission would focus only on child sex abuse in institutional contexts.  Read more »

Aussie politicians are stepping up over boy buggering Catholic priests:

Senior federal Liberal frontbencher Christopher Pyne has declared that priests should report child sex abuse crimes revealed in the confessional to police.

On Wednesday, Mr Pyne – who is a practising Catholic – said that as a member of Parliament, it would be wrong of him to advise citizens not to report crimes, particularly something as serious as child abuse.

”If a priest, or anyone else, is aware of the sexual abuse of children that is going on, I think there is an obligation on them to report it to the appropriate authorities,” he told ABC Radio.

On Tuesday, in the wake of Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s announcement of a royal commission on child abuse, Cardinal George Pell said that the seal of confession was ”inviolable”.

Mr Pell said that if a priest knew what would be confessed prior to the confession, then they should refuse to hear it.

Julia Gillard has established a Royal Commission to looking to historic Catholic Church pedo crimes. The Sydney Archbishop, Cardinal George Pell thinks this is all the result of an on-going media beat-up and there shouldn’t really be an inquiry.

Understandably people disagree:

Detective Inspector Fox said the royal commission should examine aspects of the Catholic Church such as confession, in which priests had been known to confess to other priests their abuse of children.

“We need to get laws to stop that happening and to compel those priests that are hearing those confessions to say, ‘Listen; God doesn’t want this man to commit more crimes. He wants me to come and tell the police to stop him’,” Detective Inspector Fox said.

He also hit out at Sydney Archbishop Cardinal George Pell’s claims that the royal commission was brought about by ongoing and at times one-sided media coverage.

“It certainly has been one-sided, because it seems to be the Church that has been continually screaming out the message that ‘We don’t need a royal commission, there’s nothing going on here, move along’,” Detective Inspector Fox said.

“We’ve had enough from that one side, Mr Pell. Now we’re going to start listening to the victims and start listening to their families and we’re going to start doing something about the problem.”

Detective Inspector Fox joined Twitter last week in his campaign for a royal commission.

On Monday night he tweeted: “I will sleep with a smile.”

ᔥ Sydney Morning Herald

It seems Australia’s head of the Catholic Church is a bit touchy on the subject of boy buggering. He has tried to sue Twitter and a blogger for a tweet…note that even in the apology the blogger kicks Pell in the slats on the way through. NFWAB.

A THREAT by Sydney’s Catholic Archbishop Cardinal George Pell to sue Twitter for defamation over an offensive tweet by the Melbourne blogger Catherine Deveny has revealed the increasing threat social media poses to the reputations of public figures.

While Cardinal Pell last night dropped his threat to sue over the tweet – which falsely suggested he condoned the sexual abuse of young boys – there was a call for the nation’s defamation laws to be updated to reflect the new influence of social media.

On Monday, Deveny posted a lengthy apology and retraction on her website after receiving an email from Twitter’s legal department, alerting her to the threat.

During a Q&A debate on ABC on the existence of God last month, Cardinal Pell paused after saying: ”We were preparing young English boys … ” before adding ”for Holy Communion”.

The studio audience erupted in laughter at the unfortunate pause and the comment went viral on Twitter. Minutes later, Deveny retweeted a Twitpic poster, which she said her 16,326 followers would ”love”. It showed Pell’s face on a mock flag saying, ”We were preparing young English boys”, and omitting the clarifying words, ”for Holy Communion”.

Following the legal threat, Deveny, who has more than 16,000 Twitter followers, issued an apology on her blog for any hurt Cardinal Pell may have suffered, insisting she never intended to suggest he was a paedophile.

“Clearly it was significant enough hurt and embarrassment caused for him to lawyer up and spend the Catholic Church’s money to pursue defamation action against Twitter and me,” she wrote.

“There must have been deep deliberation over the decision to spend thousands of dollars of parishioners’ money on legal fees.

“Spending money that could have been spent feeding the poor, sheltering the homeless or alleviating suffering, instead of on defamation litigation, clearly illustrates how serious the breach I allegedly committed was in the eyes of Cardinal Pell.”

Deveny noted many other Twitter users had distributed the image and called on Cardinal Pell to “forgive” her.