Op-Ed - The Curious Case of Cardinal Pell: "The Power of the State was Recruited to Destroy Pell"

by Fr Glen Tattersall
Melbourne, Victoria
Special for Rorate Caeli

“State power has been recruited in an effort to destroy Pell. This situation cannot be swept under the carpet.’’

So wrote Paul Kelly, Australia’s pre-eminent political commentator, in The Australian newspaper on Spy Wednesday. A day earlier, the full bench of the nation’s High Court, by a 7-nil margin, quashed five convictions of child abuse for which Cardinal George Pell spent 13 months and 10 days in jail in Melbourne, almost all of it in solitary confinement. There, he was denied the opportunity to celebrate Mass, and had no access to the Sacraments, for months on end.

At the eleventh hour, the nation’s highest court redeemed some of the credibility the Australian justice system had lost, reminding the nation and the world that the rule of law is not yet dead. That assertion, however, remains doubtful in Victoria (Australia’s second largest state in terms of population). There, the conduct of the Pell case routinely violated principles of justice recognised as sacrosanct in every civilised society.