Timely and Inspiring Prophetic Analysis so you can Prepare.

Jesuit-trained Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said that Cardinal Pell, now Archbishop of Sydney, was the first senior Roman Catholic prelate to take the child sex abuse scandal seriously. But victims and others say that is factually wrong and misleading.

A federal inquiry report “Betrayal of Trust” said that “the cardinal was reluctant to acknowledge and accept responsibility for the church’s failings on criminal child abuse. It also strongly condemned the current Catholic leadership, saying it trivialised and minimised abuse, treated it as ‘a short-term embarrassment’, and betrayed the church’s purported values.”

Mr. Abbott said he hadn’t read the report, but added “As is pretty well known, I have a lot of time for George Pell … my understanding is that the first senior cleric who took this issue very seriously was in fact Cardinal Pell.”

According to Wayne Chamley, of the advocacy group Broken Rites, the first senior cleric to take sex abuse by clergy seriously was Sydney Bishop Geoffrey Robinson in the 1990s. Mr. Abbott needed to “check the history,” he said.

Bishop Robinson quit in 2004, disillusioned with the church’s response. Just weeks before, Cardinal Pell launched the Melbourne Response that deflected responsibility for responding to victims away from the archbishop.

Meanwhile, Speaker of the Victorian Parliament, Ken Smith, accused the former Melbourne vicar-general, Gerald Cudmore, of committing perjury in evidence he gave to a parliamentary inquiry in 1993. Highly placed Catholics stifled his inquiry’s report, he said.

Tony Abbott’s attempt to downplay Cardinal Pell’s responsibility reveals how high-placed Jesuit-trained politicians can work to manipulate public opinion in favor of the Catholic Church.

“And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory. And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird. For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.” Revelation 18:1-3

Source Reference

• Abbott’s response to child sexual abuse by clergy angers victims