‘Naked to mine enemies’: Cardinal George Pell and the media

Abstract

In 2019 Cardinal George Pell, an important Vatican official and Australia’s most prominent Catholic cleric, was convicted of sexually abusing two choirboys in the sacristy of the Melbourne cathedral in the late 1990s. There was only one witness, the complainant. Pell spent more than 400 days in jail before he was exonerated in April 2020 after appealing to the High Court. Before, during and after the legal process most of the print and broadcast media were fiercely hostile to the Cardinal. This was due in part to Pell’s forthright personality and to his conservatism on moral issues. But he also represented the hierarchy of the Catholic Church in the midst of its crisis over sexual abuse. His public defenders were few. The clergy, by and large, refrained from commenting on the issue.

Keywords

• cardinal george pell
• sexual abuse scandal
• australia
• criminal law
• responsibility of bishops