Cardinal George Pell, who was released from prison last week after servicing minim time in prison for child sex abuse, said he is ashamed of the Catholic Church’s handling of child sex abuse scandals and compared it to ‘cutting out a cancer’.
Pell, 78, said the Church failed him and he was ashamed of he the Church dealt with the chid sex abuse scandal involving him and other Priests.
‘Yes. There are two levels. One is the crimes itself and then the treating it so inadequately for so long,’ Cardinal Pell said.
‘It’s like cutting out a cancer. I think, please God, we’ve got rid of it.’
Cardinal Pell condemned ‘these sort of activities’, saying it has done quite a bit of damage and he referred to himself as a victim in all this.
‘One of the things that grieves me is the suggestion that I’m anti-victim, or not sufficiently sympathetic,’ he said.
He said he is suffering form COVID-19 and his 13 months in jail was a dissapointment ; ‘I have just spent 13 months in jail for a crime I didn’t commit, one disappointment after another,’ He went on to say ‘I knew God was with me, but I didn’t know what He was up to, although I realised he has left all of us free.’
Cardinal Pell questioned himself and asked ‘what should I do?’ and ‘why did this happen to me?’
‘And many, most understand the direction we are heading when it is pointed out that the only son of God did not have an easy run and suffered more than his share. Jesus redeemed us and we can redeem our suffering by joining it to His and offering it to God,’ Pell said.
Pell also wrote about the global suffering brought by the COVID-19 crisis and referred to the Spanish flu pandemic as well as the Black Death in the 14 century.
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