The Catholic Church's "institutional failure" to respond
appropriately to child abuse extends to its leader in Australia,
Cardinal George Pell, a parliamentary inquiry reports.
But Cardinal Pell says he welcomes the Victorian inquiry's report and supports many of its recommendations.
The parliamentary inquiry into child abuse took Cardinal Pell
to task in its report over his attempt to separate the church as a
whole from the actions of senior religious figures it said had
"minimalised and trivialised" the issue.
In a swipe at Cardinal Pell's evidence, its report said that
following repeated questioning he agreed some bishops and religious
superiors had covered up the issue.
"That is quite different from the whole church ... the whole church is not guilty of that," he told the inquiry.
Cardinal Pell denied claims the church had trivialised child sex abuse.
"By the standards of common decency and by today's standards,
church authorities were not only slow to deal with the abuse, but
sometimes did not deal with it in any appropriate way at all. This is
indefensible," Cardinal Pell said.
The committee also challenged Cardinal Pell over a speech he
gave in Ireland in 2011 in which he said a Supreme Court judge had
advised him the sex abuse scandal "would bleed us to death" if not
cleaned up.
Its report said Cardinal Pell - the archbishop of Melbourne
from 1996 to 2001 - seemed to indicate the church's central aim was to
safeguard its own interests.
The committee also rejected evidence of other church leaders
that awareness of sexual abuse was "slow to percolate through society
and the church".
"Rather than being instrumental in exposing the issue and the
extent of the problem, the Catholic Church in Victoria minimalised and
trivialised the problem, contributed to abuse not being disclosed and
ensured the community remained uninformed," the report said.
Cardinal Pell said he supported recommendations for the
creation of a government-established independent, alternative avenue for
justice for victims of child abuse.
He said a recommendation for the Catholic Church to become
incorporated, and therefore capable of being sued, was being examined.