Others hold him in high esteem.

Neither of these groups will have their minds changed about Cardinal Pell, ­regardless of what any court might determine.

The majority of Australians fall into neither camp.

Victorian Police

In the midst of controversy and with allegations of gross criminal activity, these Australians expect the police, the prosecution authorities and the courts to do their work diligently, imposing punishment on proven criminals and protecting the rights and liberties of all other citizens.

The Pell saga has now run for more than four years, ever since the Victoria Police commenced an operation on Christmas Eve 2015 seeking evidence of any wrongdoing by Pell around his cathedral during the years 1996-2001, when he was archbishop of Melbourne.

One complainant

This extraordinary trawling exercise turned up only one complainant, whose allegations were taken all the way to trial.

The complainant gave evidence that he and his now-deceased companion were serially assaulted sexually by Pell in the priests' sacristy immediately after solemn Sunday mass in St Patrick's Cathedral in late 1996.

He also gave evidence that Pell assaulted him in the sacristy corridor after another mass a couple of months later.

That's the case the High Court has just thrown out.

Thus the anger and relief at Tuesday's decision.

Court unanimous and with one voice

The High Court has spoken definitively, unanimously and with one voice.

All seven Justices have agreed that in relation to all five charges, "there is a significant possibility that an innocent person has been convicted".

The court ­ordered that Pell's "convictions be quashed and judgments of acquittal be entered in their place".

Pell has rightly walked free in time for Easter.

The complainant is left to get on with his life as best he can, wondering what was the point of this protracted legal trauma.

The court accepted that the jury had assessed the complainant's evidence "as thoroughly credible and reliable".

In the Victorian Court of Appeal, that step was enough for two of the judges to uphold the convictions.

But the dissenting judge, Mark Weinberg, Australia's most experienced criminal appeal court judge, thought that was just the first step of a court's inquiry, and not the last.

All seven High Court judges agree.

Reasonable doubt

The court needed to examine the record of all the evidence in the case "to see whether, notwithstanding that assessment, the court is satisfied that the jury, acting rationally, ought nonetheless to have entertained a reasonable doubt as to proof of guilt".

The court unanimously decided that any jury acting rationally must have had a reasonable doubt.

In addition to the complainant, there were many other witnesses called by the prosecution in Pell's case.

They included 23 witnesses "who were involved in the conduct of solemn mass at the cathedral or who were members of the choir in 1996 and/or 1997".

Many of these witnesses were also thoroughly credible and reliable, though their reliability faltered at times given that they were trying to recall what they would have been doing after mass in St Patrick's Cathedral on a particular Sunday 22 years before.

The honesty of these witnesses was not questioned by the prosecution.

The High Court found that many of these witnesses had given consistent evidence that placed Pell on the steps of the cathedral for at least 10 minutes after mass on December 15 and 22, 1996, the only possible dates when the first four offences could have been committed.

The prosecution "conceded that the offences alleged in the first incident could not have been committed if, following mass, (Pell) had stood on the cathedral steps greeting congregants for 10 minutes".

The court also found that there was unquestioned evidence by honest witnesses that placed Pell in company with his Master of Ceremonies when he returned to the priests' sacristy to disrobe.

Furthermore, there was abundant evidence of "continuous traffic into and out of the priests' sacristy for 10 to 15 minutes" after the altar servers returned to the sacristy at the end of the procession at the conclusion of mass.

There was no five-to-six-minute hiatus for the offences to occur with Pell, the complainant and his companion in the sacristy alone, together and uninterrupted, straight after mass.

A tragedy

The tragedy of this case for everyone, including victims and complainants (and most especially this complainant), is that an ordinary police investigation would have highlighted these problems with the complainant's account.

When interviewed in Rome back in October 2016 by Victorian police officers who were being supervised by their Deputy Commissioner, Shane Patton, Pell told the police that the sacristy was "a hive of activity" after mass with altar servers, sacristan, assistant sacristan, money collectors and any concelebrating priests coming and going.

He said he would have been accompanied at all relevant times by his MC Charles Portelli.

The police returned to Australia and interviewed Portelli and the sacristan, Max Potter, who basically confirmed all Pell had said about the "hive of activity".

But police did not bother to interview one single altar server.

They made no inquiries about money collectors or concelebrating priests.

They just went ahead and charged Pell, and with great media fanfare.

They went ahead building a case on the idea the priests' sacristy might have been left ­vacant and open on this one particular day, contrary to all church routine and ritual.

The High Court rightly observed that "adherence to ritual and compliance with ­established liturgical practice is a defining feature of religious observance".

The farce of the case was the ­belated attempt by the Director of Public Prosecutions to create the space for the necessary hiatus.

At trial, the prosecutor suggested, contrary to the evidence, the altar servers might have adjourned to another room, for no reason, for five to six minutes before being called back to the priests' sacristy to resume their duties.

He had to withdraw that suggestion before the jury.

In the High Court, the DPP submitted once again that the servers might have adjourned to another room or to the sanctuary to assist the sacristan.

The High Court dealt with this suggestion kindly but firmly: "The submission comes close to repeating the submission which the prosecutor withdrew at the trial.

"There was no evidence that the altar servers went to their room to disrobe prior to returning to the sanctuary in order to assist in clearing away the sacred vessels and other objects."

In the end, there was just not the evidence to support the complainant's account.

There never was.

For the good of all victims and complainants, Victoria's DPP and police must review procedures for cases like this.

Those who neither canonise nor despise George Pell should be grateful the High Court has delivered justice according to law in this protracted saga.

• Frank Brennan is a Jesuit priest and lawyer who attended some of the Pell court proceedings. This article was first published in The Australian newspaper.

Brennan, a staunch advocate for giving Indigenous Australians a voice in parliament, accuses the Albanese government of three major errors he believes have set back the cause.

According to Brennan, the following have all been detrimental -

• the government's failure to establish a bipartisan approach after last year's Garma festival
• its reluctance to unveil draft legislation for the Voice
• the Prime Minister's unilateral selection of 21 Indigenous leaders for the referendum working group.

"These three fundamental errors by government have put us so far behind the eight-ball, not only in terms of constitutional recognition but in terms of bringing the country together" Brennan told Sydney's 2GB radio.

Brennan also expressed strong disapproval of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's comment that the Voice referendum would have been valuable even if it failed as it would bring attention to Indigenous disadvantage.

"I don't know a single Aboriginal person who says they'd want to go through this again and that it was worth doing" Brennan said.

Brennan added that, because of this mishandling, race relations in Australia are in a "hell of a mess".

Brennan says that the deadlock between major parties and Indigenous leaders on constitutional recognition has persisted for too long.

"We've been trying to find that sweet spot that can bring the Labor Party, the Liberal Party and the Aboriginal leadership together" he said.

"What I do urge on people when they're thinking on how to vote is let's at least respectfully listen to the Aboriginal voices.

"I would hope that people, if they vote No, will do it because they've heard Aboriginal people convincing them that they should vote No - or, if they vote Yes, they've heard Aboriginal people convincing them they should vote Yes," said Brennan.

In the event of a 'No' vote for the Voice referendum, Brennan urged the Prime Minister and Liberal Opposition Leader Peter Dutton to reconsider their stances on constitutional recognition. He also emphasised the importance of listening to Aboriginal voices when making a voting decision.

The Jesuit lawyer highlighted the stark contrast between the voice referendum and the same-sex marriage plebiscite, noting that the latter was about treating everyone the same way.

"You didn't have leading gays and lesbians out there saying vote No. What we've got here is clear public division between key Aboriginal leaders," he said.

"That's why we needed a process which was far more aimed at getting people locked into a process, and that sadly wasn't done," Brennan concluded.

Prime Minister Albanese meanwhile remains optimistic about the referendum's chances.

Sources

• The Australian
• Radio 2gB - Sydney

Despite the political risks of taking a stand, some urge these leaders to move beyond mere words and show decisive support for the constitutional change.

Francis Sullivan, who formerly led the Catholic Church's Truth, Justice and Healing Council, minced no words in his call for action.

"This is not a time for dilly-dallying. This is a time for leadership," Sullivan declared.

He expressed concern that the constitutional change's legal intricacies are muddying the waters, causing some church leaders to waver despite their earlier, unequivocal support for the Indigenous Voice.

Sullivan weighed in saying, "This is a moral issue for the church, not a legal one."

The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference has already endorsed the Indigenous Voice in writing, but Sullivan is pushing for that endorsement to be backed by concrete actions before the referendum deadline.

Voice vote a "hell of a mess"

Fr Frank Brennan SJ, a long-time advocate for Indigenous rights, recently spoke at a gathering in Victoria.

Brennan described the Voice referendum as "a hell of a mess," but is still urging people to vote "yes".

"I'm one Australian who stood up and said, ‘I don't think the wording is perfect, I don't think the process has been perfect, but we're left with an invidious choice,'" Brennan said.

"Do we choose some wording which may not be perfect, or do we say No and we put this off to another day?"

Brennan says Catholic social teaching and decades of papal support for Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples provide strong grounds for Catholics to vote Yes on 14 October, he said.

Religious community divided

However, the religious community remains divided on the issue.

While Anglican leaders have voiced support for the constitutional change, some within the church are cautioning that the "view from the pew" may not align with the bishops' stance.

"I think the bishops will find that they have been singing in their own bathroom on this one," Fr Peter Macleod-Miller, the rector of St Matthews Anglican Church in Albury.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese recently attended a Uniting Church service in Sydney, pledging bipartisan oversight for the Voice's legislative setup if the majority votes in favour.

Simon Hansford, a Uniting Church minister, argued that Christian teachings inherently support the Voice, as they call for aiding those who are marginalised.

Despite considerable support from its member councils and other Islamic leaders, the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils has yet to reach a consensus and the Australian Christian Lobby has yet to declare its stance on the matter.

Sources

• SMH
• The Catholic Weekly

Father Frank Brennan (pictured), a Jesuit priest and human rights lawyer, blames leadership on both political sides for not seeking common ground.

He hopes a "reconciling spirit" will blow through parliament's chambers during the next three weeks while elected leaders lay the groundwork for the three-month campaign.

He says he'd like some changes made to the federal government's proposed Indigenous Voice referendum question.

It's too broad, he says. Its reference to the Voice making representations to executive government will attract many legal challenges.

He suggests changing the wording from "executive government" to "ministers of state" could broaden support for the referendum.

However, given all major political parties' reluctance to consider any proposed Constitutional amendments, the wording of the change "might not be perfect," he says.

Stating his case in Rome

On Saturday, Brennan will deliver a lecture on the referendum at the Pontifical Gregorian University.

His draft lecture notes say he proposes discussing a contemporary Australian perspective on recognising Aboriginal rights.

He will also urge Australians to recommit to "deep inner listening" towards each other and the land.

This will include reminding Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton of their responsibility for the debate's tone.

"Neither side of the parliamentary chamber has done what was needed to bring the country together, to bring reconciliation in our land, to bring the country to ‘Yes'," Brennan's notes say.

"The government has assured parliament that it would have the power to legislate whether and how representations by the Voice need to be considered by the executive government, and should "tweak the words" to ensure that public servants performing routine administrative tasks will not be required to consider representations by the Voice."

Voters will face a stark choice in the referendum, his lecture notes continue.

"We can vote ‘No' to a constitutionally enshrined Voice either because we continue to think that all constitutional entitlements should be held ‘in common with all other Australians' or because we are not convinced that the Voice will work effectively," the notes say.

"Or we can vote ‘Yes' because, whatever the imperfections of the wording and the risk of future complications, we think it is high time that Australia's First Peoples were recognised in the Constitution in a manner sought and approved by a broad cross-section of Indigenous leaders."

He also plans to tell his audience that only eight of 44 referendums have succeeded in Australia since the federation and he hopes "this one will be the ninth".

Papal gift

Brennan presented a copy of his new book, "An Indigenous Voice to Parliament: Considering a Constitutional Bridge", to Pope Francis this week.

His dedication on the gift says he is "hoping and praying for an Indigenous Voice to Parliament."

"May the Australian people bring the country to ‘Yes', recognising the rights of our First Peoples who have occupied the Great South Land of the Holy Spirit for tens of thousands of years," he says.

Source

• WAToday

It's time to declare that George Pell is innocent of the preposterous charges he faced in the County Court of Victoria and to move on for the good of everyone, including bona fide complainants and victims of child sexual abuse in institutions.

Because of the suppression orders put in place by the County Court, you were unable to follow the trials of Cardinal George Pell day by day. That's why I was asked to attend the proceedings. That's why I have published a book, Observations on the Pell Proceedings - so you can make your own assessment of the evidence.

My book is dedicated ‘to those who seek truth, justice and healing and to those who have been denied them'. Having followed the Pell proceedings closely, I am convinced that the case did nothing to help bona fide complainants, victims, and their supporters.

I write in the introduction: "The failures of the Victoria police, prosecution authorities, and the two most senior Victorian judges in these proceedings did nothing to help the efforts being made to address the trauma of institutional child sexual abuse. As a society we need to do better, and the legal system needs to play its part."

I am convinced that light and healing can be more readily sought and hoped for if appropriate steps are taken to correct the errors made in the Pell proceedings. The compounding errors resulted in the unanimous judgment of the High Court of Australia which placed the Victorian criminal justice system in a very poor light.

I was left in no doubt. Cardinal Pell was innocent of these charges. He should never have even been charged.

At the first trial, the jury could not agree. So a second trial was held at which Pell was convicted of all five charges. The Victorian Court of Appeal upheld the convictions by 2-1.

The dissenting judge was Mark Weinberg, the most experienced criminal appeal court judge in the country.

He has now completely retired from the bench having taken up the demanding task of Special Investigator into the Afghanistan war crime allegations.

The High Court sat all seven judges on the final appeal. They were unanimous in their judgment signing on to just one statement of reasons ordering that Pell's "convictions be quashed and judgments of acquittal be entered in their place."

At trial, the defence called no evidence.

Cardinal Pell arrives at the County Court in Melbourne on 27 February 2019. He was jailed after being found guilty of child sexual abuse.

The prosecution's main witness was the complainant ‘J' (his name was and remains suppressed) who described what he said he recalled having happened to him and his friend, the now-deceased ‘R', in 1996 when they were 13 years of age. But the prosecution also called, at the request of the defence, a lot of other witnesses who were involved with the solemn masses celebrated in St Patrick's Cathedral Melbourne in late 1996 - sacristan, MC, choristers, choirmaster and organist.

Given that it was alleged that four of the five offences were said to have occurred in the priests' sacristy shortly after mass when usually you expect to find altar servers in attendance, it was surprising that the police did not interview any altar servers and the prosecution was not minded to call any altar servers until the defence forced their hand.

By the time of the second trial, two altar servers recommended for inclusion by the defence were called by the prosecution to give evidence. One of these altar servers, Jeff Connor, had a comprehensive diary which allowed the prosecution to identify the only possible dates for the offences to have occurred: 15 and 22 December 1996.

The other altar server, Daniel McGlone who is now a barrister, provided evidence of his attendance at one of these masses where he and his mother met Archbishop Pell on the steps after mass.

Fr Frank Brennan SJ. The high-profile legal expert attended the Pell proceedings and, after hearing the prosecution case, became convinced the cardinal was innocent. PHOTO: ACU

The High Court noted: "The trial judge held that evidence adduced by the prosecution that was inconsistent with, or likely to contradict, J's account of events, was relevantly "unfavourable". His Honour granted leave to the prosecutor to cross-examine a number of witnesses (and foreshadowed the grant of leave in relation to other witnesses)" with respect to six topics.

Despite having obtained the leave to cross-examine, the prosecution never took up that option and so never challenged the version of events given by the opportunity witnesses.

The six topics included: ‘(i) whether (Pell) was always in the company of another, including (the MC) Portelli or (the sacristan) Potter, when robed; (ii) whether (Pell) always greeted congregants on the steps of the Cathedral following Sunday solemn Mass'.

The High Court noted that this grant of leave to cross-examine ‘reflected the trial judge's satisfaction that the anticipated evidence, if accepted, excluded the realistic possibility of the offending having occurred as J described it.'

The High Court noted, "The honesty of the opportunity witnesses was not in question."

In its conclusion, the High Court realising that the crown case was full of holes decided to focus on just a few essentials. The court saw no need to address all the improbabilities or impossibilities raised by the defence.

The court said: ‘The likelihood of two choirboys in their gowns being able to slip away from the procession without detection; of finding altar wine in an unlocked cupboard; and of the applicant being able to manoeuvre his vestments to expose his penis are considerations that may be put to one side." There was no need to consider the possibility or likelihood of these matters.

Having reviewed all the evidence and having accepted for the purposes of argument that "the Court of Appeal majority did not err in holding that J's evidence of the first incident did not contain discrepancies, or display inadequacies, of such a character as to require the jury to have entertained a doubt as to guilt" the Court went on to conclude:

"It remains that the evidence of witnesses, whose honesty was not in question, (i) placed (Pell) on the steps of the Cathedral for at least ten minutes after Mass on 15 and 22 December 1996; (ii) placed him in the company of Portelli when he returned to the priests' sacristy to remove his vestments; and (iii) described continuous traffic into and out of the priests' sacristy for ten to 15 minutes after the altar servers completed their bows to the crucifix."

Cardinal Pell

So that was it - game, set and match.

On the evidence led in the case, there was no way that Pell and the two boys could have been alone together in the priests' sacristy soon after mass. There was neither time nor place for the offences to be committed. Absent both time and place in any narrative and you are in the realm of fantasy or false memory. The most basic police work would have disclosed this early in an investigation, particularly in a properly run investigation which had the huge resources committed as the Victoria Police dedicated to Operation Tethering which had Pell as its sole focus.

When the complainant J first presented to police on 18 June 2015, he had a fairly simple account of how he, his friend R and Cardinal Pell came to be in the priests' sacristy at St Patrick's Cathedral on their own while Pell did dreadful things to them.

They were finishing mass, and as usual, they were in an internal procession going directly from the sanctuary to the choir room via a corridor which passed the priests' sacristy which they had never previously entered. They would have taken only 56 steps to get there. The two boys started ferreting around going to places they should not go, and they discovered some altar wine in the priests' sacristy and started swilling it.

Mind you, even this account was problematic. Where were all the other people who would be passing along that corridor at that time, and especially, where were the people who would have been coming and going from the priests' sacristy immediately after mass, ferrying things from the sanctuary, bringing in money for collection or counting, concelebrants changing out of their garb etc?

J stated that he never revisited the priests' sacristy until the police took him on a walk through preparing for the case.

The sacristy of St Patrick's Cathedral

If the journalist Louise Milligan were accurate in her reporting and if R's mother was rightly recalling her own conversation with J, J also had another account at that time.

Let me quote Milligan's account directly which purports to be a record of the conversation between Milligan and the mother "sometime after the detectives took her statement" on 1 July 2015, which was after J had provided his first statement to police on 18 June 2015 (but before he made his second statement on 31 July 2015) alleging that the offending had occurred after mass:

"(J) gently told her what he says happened with the Archbishop. "He told me that himself and [my son] used to play in the back of the Church in the closed-off rooms," she says.

"In the cathedral?" I ask her.

"In the cathedral, yep. And um, they got sprung by Archbishop Pell and he locked the door and he made them perform oral sex." (J) still remembered the incident so clearly. Being picked up afterwards by his parents. Staring out the car window on the way home."

In the second edition of her book Cardinal, Milligan changed the detail about a locked door to a blocked door, and omitted all reference to J being picked up by his parents. The effect of these changes was to bring her account more into line with the evidence J gave at trial. Milligan doesn't explain whether the other boy's mother just got these things wrong or whether Milligan got them wrong. But it doesn't much matter.

This second account of recurring ferreting in back rooms when no one else was around was dropped altogether, or more accurately never adopted by the prosecution.

Milligan didn't give it much more of a run. It became generally known that Pell did not live at the cathedral presbytery and was only ever there for major liturgical events.

Then-Victorian Court of Appeal Justice Mark Weinberg. While Justices Chris Maxwell and Anne Ferguson upheld Cardinal Pell's conviction, Justice Weinberg dissented.

The first account of a one-off escapade straight after mass received a considerable re-working.

You will recall that Shane Patton (who when appointed Victorian Police Commissioner in June 2020 was described as ‘forthright and analytical', with his colleagues saying he was ‘right into the detail' ) led a couple of his men to Rome to interview Cardinal Pell on 19 October 2016. At the interview, Detective Sergeant Chris Reed was accompanied by Detective Inspector Paul Sheridan.

Preparing for the record of interview, Pell had thought, in light of the preliminary written details given him by the police, that the allegations related to assaults in a back room of the cathedral some time after choir practice when others would not be around - much like the Milligan account which was published a year later.

But it was now made clear to him that the allegation was that the assaults occurred soon after solemn 11am mass in the priests' sacristy. Having heard that, Pell must have thought that the police would realise that J's allegations were unreliable, if not ridiculous.

At the outset in the interview Pell told the police: "The allegations relating to Saint Patrick's cathedral are … the products of fantasy." He went on to say:

"The most rudimentary interview of staff and those who were choir boys at the cathedral in that year and later would confirm that the allegations are fundamentally improbable and most certainly false and I invite my interviewers to tell me who they've spoken to and I'm happy to provide them in due course the persons who can speak authoritatively about my functions, presence and conduct at the cathedral generally and more particularly at times when abuse is alleged to have occurred."

"I would earnestly hope that this is done before any decision is made whether to lay charges because immeasurable damage will be done to me and to the church by the mere laying of charges which on proper examination will later be found to be untrue. Thank you."

Detective Sergeant Chris Reed responded, "Thank you. I appreciate that."

Mr Reed, Mr Patton, and Detective Superintendent Sheridan returned to Australia and did nothing of the sort. Pell gave the police four vital pieces of information of which they were previously unaware, and which should have brought the investigation to an end after some very simple police work back home.

Click book to buy

Four vital pieces of information from the Pell record of interview, 19 October 2016

1. The Hive of Activity in the Priests' Sacristy After Mass
The first vital piece of information was that there would be a hive of activity in the priests' sacristy after mass, including the sacristan, his assistant, money collectors, concelebrants and altar servers.

Pell told the police that they should go back to Melbourne and interview these people who would be able to corroborate his claim that it was just not possible for Pell to be alone in that place at that time with two choir boys. Here are Pell's actual words spoken at the record of interview:

"Now, the sacristy after mass is generally a hive of activity because you've … well have got the sacristan there and often you had an assistant sacristan. If there were concelebrants, they would divest. The servers would get out of their vestments. The collectors would bring in the collection. The sacristan and the assistants would be bringing the chalice and the vessels out from the altar. Now, I was always accompanied by my master of ceremonies after the mass, so he would come around with me and help me unrobe. It was just the protocol."

When J's version was put to him, Pell said, "What a load of absolute and disgraceful rubbish. Completely false. Madness. All sorts of people used to come to the sacristy to speak to the priest. The sacristans were around, and altar servers were around. This is the sacristy at the cathedral after Sunday Mass?"

Mr Reed replied, "yes'" To which Pell responded, "Well, need I say anymore. What a load of garbage and falsehood and deranged falsehood. My master of ceremonies will be able to say that he was always with me after the ceremonies until we went back to the car park or back to the presbytery. The sacristan was around. The altar servers were around. People were coming and going."

The police led by Mr Patton with an eye for detail returned to Melbourne and did not interview one single money collector nor one single altar server.

By the time of the second trial, the police had been provided with the diary of an altar server Jeff Connor who documented key participants at each mass. Here is Robert Richter's cross examination of Christopher Reed the lead investigator at trial:

Yes. One of the interesting things about his diary is you were able to establish, from his diary, the names of a whole lot of altar servers, who were relevant to the relevant period?

- Well, relevant period. There was altar servers - I don't - I actually don't recall reading the - a name of altar servers in the diary of Mr Connor.

Well, in the diary entries he has lunch, they have regular lunches?

- Okay.

Do you recall reading something like that, and he names them? For example, in July, ‘Serves luncheon at Jimmy Watson's Lygon Street, Carlton, with Ray, Ralph' and a few other names there that I can't read?

- I don't recall that entry, no.

All right. They had regular lunches, get togethers, the altar servers, the adults?

- Okay.

You accept that, don't you?

- Yes, I'll accept that, yes.

So what happens is this; apart from the fact that we tracked down Mr Connor you had not tracked down any altar servers at all?

- No, that's correct.

But the altar servers were a very, very important part of this investigation?

- Well, not during the investigative stage, no, we were concerned with the choir boys specifically, because the events that have been alleged occurred surrounding the choir boys, not the altar servers that were in a different location and had a different role.

But there weren't any choir boys present when this happened, alleged to have happened?

- Well, there weren't any altar servers.

There weren't any of those present … ?

- There weren't any altar servers alleged to be present either.

Correct, but the altar servers took part in processions in the same way that the choir boys took part in the processions?

- That's correct, yes.

And not just that, the altar boys were more important because the altar boys were in a position to say what they did after mass in the priest sacristy?

- Evidence has been given to that effect, yes.

Yes, and you accept that?

- I accept the evidence that's given, yeah.

So the situation is that apart from Jeff Connor - it was certainly possible to ask him for the names of other altar servers who were operational at the time?

- Yes, it was.

But he was never asked by anyone in the taskforce?

- No, he wasn't.

No attempt was made by the police on their return from Rome to contact any altar server, or any money collector, or any concelebrant.

Why?

Because J said none of them was in attendance. Pell had told them that these people would routinely have been in attendance in the very spot and at the very time that the offending was alleged to have occurred. Instead of investigating the allegations, the police simply accepted J's account unquestioningly including the assertion that there were no altar servers present during any of the periods that the first incident could have occurred.

They interviewed no altar servers. But they interviewed over 30 choristers.

Why?

Because J was a chorister. Choristers don't enter the priests' sacristy after mass, unless of course they are misbehaving.

This policing technique, if applied to other cases, would compromise many a criminal investigation. Let's consider an example where police receive a report of a crime, not from a victim but from someone who is simply an honest eyewitness. Imagine if a pedestrian claimed to witness a bank robbery, telling the police that she did not see any bank tellers in attendance when the bank vault was raided.

The police then spend 18 months interviewing 30 other pedestrians, but they decide not to interview any bank tellers because the pedestrian witness said she did not see any. The police would want to interview all available bank tellers if only to learn from them what their usual practices were, assisting the police to understand how the robbery could possibly have happened.

The necessity of interviewing the bank tellers as part of a proper investigation is underscored if there is evidence that routinely bank tellers would be in attendance at the time the robbery occurred.

2. The Procession Route

During the record of interview, Pell told the police that it was usual after a solemn mass in the cathedral celebrated by the archbishop that the whole entourage including the choir of up to 60 members would not recess simply by way of an internal procession of 56 steps from the sanctuary direct to the sacristy.

Rather with the full fanfare of a recessional hymn followed by an Organ Voluntary, they would all process down the central nave exiting at the west door, then engaging in an external procession around the south side of the cathedral. I've measured that route at 308 steps. Together with the cathedral MC I have walked the route at procession speed. It takes about four and a half minutes. I should note that being over 6' 4", my steps tend to be more than average.

Pell told the police to go back to Melbourne and speak to the relevant people. When they got back to Melbourne the police found that cathedral personnel like the MC Monsignor Charles Portelli, the choirmaster Mr John Mallinson, the organist Dr Geoff Cox, and the sacristan Mr Max Potter confirmed what Pell had said about external processions.

If the weather were inclement or if Pell had another appointment shortly after mass, they would do an internal procession. But otherwise they would process externally. There would be lots of tourists around. It was obviously something of a spectacle. J seemed to be on his own, claiming that internal processions were routine and the order of the day.

By the time of the committal proceedings in March 2018, J's evidence was that on the day of the first four offences there had indeed been an external procession, and not an internal procession as he had earlier claimed in his police statements of 18 June 2015 and 31 July 2015 and in his later walk-through with the police on 29 March 2016 at the cathedral.

Victorian Supreme Court Justices Chief Justice Ferguson and President Maxwell wrote in their judgment: "In the 2016 walk-through, J said that the choir would come up and down the internal sacristy corridor every Sunday, before and after Mass."

For some unexplained reason, J remained fixed on the idea that he and R gained access to the priests' sacristy via the corridor they would have used if it had still been an internal procession. He described a two step route. First there was an external procession.

Second, when he and R got close to the south transept, the two of them without any prior planning and without any discussion peeled off from the procession, entering the cathedral via one of the doors at the south transept, then following the corridor which they would have taken if it were an internal procession. I have measured that route. It is 277 steps.

By the time Pell came to his first trial in the County Court in August 2018, J was confronted with a mountain of evidence from other witnesses called by the prosecution who claimed that it would be very difficult for two young boy sopranos at the front of the procession to peel off from the procession while it was still in train outside the cathedral, and to do so without being seen by others including adult choir members who would have been in line behind them with a clear line of sight.

Later, J's evidence became that he and R had remained in the procession until it reached the toilet corridor hidden from the view of the tourists. The toilet corridor is a narrow passageway outside the cathedral that provides access to public toilets and to the sacristies via a locked door.

J and another chorister Andrew La Greca (on whom Louise Milligan was very reliant ) gave evidence that by the time the procession reached the toilet corridor, order was breaking down and people were starting to disperse. So while inside the toilet corridor which is just 1.33m wide, J and R spontaneously and without any prior planning or discussion decided to go against the flow, finding their way out of the toilet corridor, back to the south transept then resuming the route which they would have taken to the priests' sacristy if indeed it had been an internal procession.

He insisted that they walked; they did not run. I have measured this new convoluted route at 408 steps. It takes five and a half minutes.

By the time of the second trial, the prosecution, searching to find the six minutes during which the offending was said to have occurred, had postulated that the offending must have occurred during the private prayer time after mass.

This six minutes was said to be the time that the sacristan Max Potter allowed for congregants to pray uninterrupted after mass before he got his altar servers to start their clearing duties on the sanctuary.

This six minutes had to elapse before the altar servers leading the procession had reached the priests' sacristy when they bowed to the crucifix at the end of their procession, and before they commenced their duties ferrying sacred items from the sanctuary to the priests' sacristy.

So here was the problem. J claimed that he and R were ferreting around and "would have only been in the room for a couple of minutes maximum before Pell came in."

But on the final version put the jury, they had already spent at least five and a half minutes on the convoluted new route getting to the sacristy in the first place. Mind you, it would have taken them longer than that because J said they were poking around various places before they got to the priests' sacristy.

You'd wonder what the two boys would have discussed with each other before they started their poking around and as they backtracked the 122 steps from the toilet corridor to the south transept and into the priests' sacristy.

Back in Rome, the change of the procession route was the matter which most concerned Detective Superintendent Sheridan. It was the only matter on which he took over from Detective Sergeant Reed during the interview seeking clarification that indeed the usual practice when the weather was fine was for Pell to process down the centre aisle and then to process externally after having stopped for a considerable period of time greeting parishioners on the cathedral steps at the West Door.

Sheridan realised that there were problems with J's account of the internal procession.

As it turned out, there were to be even greater problems with an amended account of an external procession that swallowed up all the available time for the offending to have occurred.

One can only speculate whether Detective Superintendent Sheridan was thereafter unhesitatingly prepared to run with J's account after these warning lights started flashing.

The final route proposed by J not only swallowed up all the possible time for the sacristan Potter to wait before instructing his minions to commence ferrying items from the sanctuary. It created all sorts of imponderables.

How would two 13 year-old boys with no previous planning decide to head off on such a convoluted route? Why wouldn't they have simply continued to the end of the toilet corridor turning left and commencing their ferreting, taking just 22 steps down the corridor which was all so familiar to them, given that they went up and back along that corridor every Sunday as J had told the police during the walk-through in March 2016?

What made them think they would not have been sprung upon entering a sacristy which was decidedly off-limits to the choir?

For most if not all of the six minutes during which Potter was allowing time for people to say their prayers after mass, J and his companion were not walking directly to the priests' sacristy via the 56 step internal procession, they were on a convoluted outside procession and cutback of 408 steps which would have taken them at least five and a half minutes before you factor in the additional couple of minutes for ferreting around, finding the wine and swigging it.

St Patrick's Cathedral Melbourne

3. Greeting on the Steps

Pell also told the police at the record of interview that his practice was to greet congregants on the steps at the west door after mass.

In his record of interview, Pell said, "I mean let me - let me start to roll out - most things on these or this story is counter factual and with a bit of luck I'll be able to demonstrate point by point. The first thing is that after every mass I would stay out at the front of the cathedral and talk to people."

The prosecution willingly conceded that this protocol might have developed later in Pell's ministry but they questioned whether Pell would have spent very long on the steps after his first two solemn masses as archbishop at 11am on the Sunday.

Anyone with experience of these things knows that the new archbishop once he stopped on the steps to greet people would have been besieged by his new parishioners.

At his first couple of masses, he would have been more likely to spend more time rather than less greeting those keen to meet their new pastor. If in any doubt about Pell's style and practice at this time, just consider the two page feature done on Pell in the Melbourne Age the month before these critical masses.

ABC journalist Louise Milligan leaves the Magistrates Court on 27 March 2018 after having been ordered to transcribe shorthand notes of conversations she had with Cardinal Pell's alleged victims.

Karen Kissane ended her 4,000 word article The Gospel According to George describing Pell after a funeral mass at Fawkner parish:

"After the service they spill on to the concrete outside and the older Italians line up in front of Pell to pay their respects. They reach for his hand, then bend and kiss his knuckles or his ring in an ancient gesture of homage. Some wipe away tears. Pell is unsurprised and responds to each one with a few words or a blessing. Later, when he tries to pose for a photograph, he is surrounded by a flock of giggling nonnas half his size who want to get in the picture too.

They are quite unembarrassed; he is their archbishop, the face of their church, and he belongs to them. This is Catholic faith in the old style, ritualised, tribalised and unquestioning." Every minute Pell spent on those steps after the 11am mass further blew out of the water the prosecution theory that Pell could have been back in the sacristy within six minutes of leaving the sanctuary.

Even if he'd proceeded directly from the sanctuary without stopping to greet a single parishioner, he would have needed to take 308 steps over a four and a half minute period which would have commenced after everyone else had processed before him, including 60 members of the choir and a handful of altar servers.

You will appreciate that the person at the rear of a procession of at least 70 people processing in twos arrives at the final destination some time after those at the head of the procession. Neither Pell nor J would have made it to the sacristy within the private prayer time, even if that time ran for six minutes rather than two minutes at most as Mallinson had testified.

One day when visiting the cathedral taking measurements, I was told by the MC that the archbishop leaves the sacristy at 10.54am precisely, when celebrating the 11am mass.

So it usually takes the archbishop and his entourage up to six minutes to process at the beginning of mass from the sacristy to the west door of the cathedral. The procession of choristers, servers, concelebrants and archbishop would take the same time to return.

Servers hold candles as the Gospel is proclaimed at Mass in St Patrick's Cathedral. A competent police investigation would have ended the trial against Cardinal George Pell before it even began, writes Fr Frank Brennan SJ

4. Accompanied by MC Portelli

Pell also told the police at the record of interview in Rome that he would have been accompanied at all relevant times by his MC Monsignor Portelli. The prosecution investigated a couple of strategies to separate Pell and Portelli for the critical 6 minutes needed for the offending to occur.

The first strategy took up Portelli's admission that if there was another commitment for the archbishop in the cathedral that afternoon, Portelli might have taken a couple of minutes to reorder the archbishop's speaking notes and liturgical books back at the lectern on the sanctuary. But there were no such scheduled events on these days. It was suggested that the archbishop might have celebrated the evening mass at the cathedral and that might have required Portelli to prepare papers at the lectern.

There was no evidence of that.

When the archbishop celebrates the main solemn mass in the cathedral on a Sunday he does not return to celebrate the low-key evening mass. In any event such an absence would account only for a couple of minutes absence.

A second strategy was attempted unsuccessfully at both trials. The prosecution suggested that Portelli might have ducked out for a smoke while being fully vested himself and while the archbishop was still in procession at the end of mass or while the archbishop was on the steps greeting parishioners.

Both times, the prosecutor had to retract the suggestion before the jury and apologise. Not only was there no evidence to support the suggestion, the only evidence excluded all possibility of the suggestion. The suggestion was put directly to Portelli by the prosecutor and he denied it. For example at the second trial, the prosecutor asked Portelli:

You said you were a 20 cigarettes a day man, mass has been for over an hour, you didn't go outside to have a smoke after mass?
- It would be as appropriate as for instance His Honour walking down William Street dressed as he is smoking a cigarette, which is not done.

When the prosecutor put the suggestion to the jury a second time, this was the indication as to just how difficult it was for the prosecution to find those magical 6 minutes when Pell could be alone together with the two boys in the sacristy.

Conclusion

I've said enough to indicate why no one can seriously question the conclusion of the seven High Court judges. Let me quote to you again their conclusion:

"It remains that the evidence of witnesses, whose honesty was not in question, (i) placed (Pell) on the steps of the Cathedral for at least ten minutes after Mass on 15 and 22 December 1996; (ii) placed him in the company of Portelli when he returned to the priests' sacristy to remove his vestments; and (iii) described continuous traffic into and out of the priests' sacristy for ten to 15 minutes after the altar servers completed their bows to the crucifix.'"

Chief Justice Ferguson and Justice Maxwell denied the validity of this conclusion. By way of contrast, here is what they concluded:

"In our view, taking the evidence as a whole, it was open to the jury to find that the assaults took place in the 5-6 minutes of private prayer time and that this was before the ‘hive of activity' described by the other witnesses began. The jury were not bound to have a reasonable doubt."

The High Court rightly concluded that on the overwhelming weight of evidence neither Pell nor the two boys could have been in the sacristy during those six minutes. The boys were processing and back-tracking and ferreting; Pell was processing down the main aisle and out on the steps greeting his new parishioners.

The High Court rightly concluded that on the overwhelming weight of evidence neither Pell nor the two boys could have been in the sacristy during those six minutes.

Upon the analysis of the High Court and consistent with the painstaking review of the totality of the evidence by the dissenting Justice Weinberg in the Victorian Court of Appeal, there was not the evidence to convict Pell on any of these charges.

Since the High Court decision, no one has come up with even a credible theory as to how Pell and two choir boys could be alone together completely uninterrupted for six minutes in the priests' sacristy soon after mass and before choir rehearsals for the Christmas concert.

If the police had their doubts about the statements of Pell, Portelli and Potter, on their return from Rome in October 2016 they should have sought out and spoken to any altar servers, money collectors and concelebrants who would have been there, before instituting committal proceedings 18 months later.

In the Rome interview, Pell had provided the police with an inconvenient truth: J's account was just not credible. But, undaunted by this inconvenient truth, the police returned to Melbourne and pursued their unsustainable case theory.

None of us knows the identity of the complainant, nor should we. When the High Court acquitted Cardinal Pell of all charges, J issued a statement through his lawyer Vivian Waller saying:

"My journey has been long and I am relieved that it is over. I have my ups and downs. The darkness is never far away. Despite the stress of the legal process and public controversy, I have tried hard to keep myself together. I am OK. I hope that everyone who has followed this case is OK."

Earlier, Vivian Waller told Louise Milligan: "My client's had a very long journey. The criminal process has been quite stressful for him and it's not over yet. Like many survivors, my client has experienced depression, loneliness struggle with various issues over time."

Undoubtedly he has suffered additional trauma through the processes of the law, including the appeals all the way to the High Court. Much of it was avoidable. These processes have also re-traumatised many other people who have experienced institutional child sexual abuse and who have placed hope in our legal system. Their situation would have been assisted if the police in this case had undertaken competent policing.

These failures in due process exposed J to needless and avoidable harm and imposed the grossest injustice on Cardinal Pell.

From the moment VicPol laid charges, the reality was that Pell had to prove his innocence to the public. VicPol knew that the mere laying of these charges against Pell would devastate, if not destroy his reputation, in the community. In part, VicPol, therefore, bears the responsibility for the appalling scenes of vitriol and abuse outside the County Court after Pell's conviction became known.

Everything said by the High Court and by Justice Weinberg vindicates the claims made by Pell in his record of interview, particularly his claims about an external procession, his greeting parishioners on the steps, his being accompanied by his MC, and the sacristy being a hive of activity.

If only the police had subjected J's recollections and claims to closer scrutiny after learning these recollections of Pell about his usual practice at the cathedral. If only they'd interviewed some of the altar servers. If only they had tracked down and interviewed some of the money collectors and concelebrants. With competent policing, there would have been no need for these trials and appeals.

If only the DPP had insisted that the police provide a brief of evidence capable of countering not only Pell's account, but also the claims made by a string of opportunity witnesses who honestly recalled to the best of their ability what went on at the cathedral during the busiest time of the week.

The DPP has a policy that it ‘not put forward theories that are not supported by evidence'. By the time the case got to the High Court, the DPP appearing in person did put forward theories not supported by the evidence.

Kerri Judd QC asserted wrongly that the altar servers adjourned to the ‘worker sacristy' for the critical minutes, and that the private prayer time might have been much more than six minutes. There was no evidence for either proposition.

She even submitted that the matter should be remitted to the Victorian Court of Appeal because the High Court did not "have before it the material to enable it to determine whether the verdicts are unreasonable or cannot be supported by the evidence."

In its judgment, the High Court described this submission with one word: "specious."

The Pell saga reminds us that we should be grateful that we live in a federation with the High Court of Australia overseeing the criminal justice systems of the states and territories.
It was specious to suggest that the Pell matter be referred back to the Victorian criminal justice system.

When Cardinal Pell walked free from prison, he said, "I hold no ill will toward my accuser, I do not want my acquittal to add to the hurt and bitterness so many feel; there is certainly hurt and bitterness enough. The only basis for long term healing is truth and the only basis for justice is truth, because justice means truth for all."

I hope my book and these remarks contribute to justice, truth and healing.

• Father Frank Brennan SJ is the Rector of Newman College at Parkville in Melbourne and an adjunct professor of law at the Thomas More Law School at Australian Catholic University.
• Republished courtesy of Frank Brennan SJ and the Catholic Weekly.
• Buy the book

"There are lots of people, including our veterans, who know these Afghans. They want us to do more. We can do much better than 3,000," Brennan told Sky News Australia.

There are particular fears for the safety of women and girls as the Taliban imposes hardline Islamic rule on Afghanistan.

Alex Hawke, the Australian Immigration Minister, defended the number, pointing out that Australia's total intake of Afghans since 2013 would be up to 14,000.

He said Australia has been welcoming Afghans every year, unlike some other countries.

In 2015, the Abbott government granted 12,000 humanitarian visas to people in Syria on top of Australia's regular humanitarian program.

However, Brennan pointed out that Australia used to have 18,750 places a year for humanitarian cases. That was reduced by 5,000 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. "So, to say that we'll just take 3,000 in the first place as a floor, not a ceiling, and that's part of the 13,000. We need to get back to a decent intake."

Brennan believes three issues need to be addressed related to the Afghanistan refugee situation.

The first issue is the evacuation of people from Afghanistan, given the collapse of the situation there. The Australian government need to "evacuate those who are Australian citizens, those who have visas and those who worked for the Australians."

Secondly, Brennan asked, what will Australia do for those who will flow across the border, particularly into Pakistan and Iran or seeking refuge elsewhere?

"As Australians, we need to do our bit, and I'm one of those Australians who think our bit sounds more like twenty thousand rather than three thousand," said Brennan.

The third issue Father Brennan raised was "what the country should do with the 5,000 Afghans on temporary protection visas. Many have been in Australia for 10 years?"

"I think we should move to give permanent residence to those 5,000 so they can start to sponsor their families. Then we can sponsor 20,000 places for those who are stranded in Pakistan or Iran."

According to Brennan, the 5,000 Afghan refugees have been living in Australia, being responsible citizens, ably employed and getting educated.

"They're the very ones we would be looking to say, well, look, we can't take all of those Afghans who are fleeing persecution under the Taliban. But sensibly, we should be taking those who already have good family connections to those here."

"I think the sense of the Australian community is that there are enough people who will say, ‘well, hang on; if they're here, they've been here over 10 years, let's give them permanent residence.'"

"What's the Australian community prepared to do given that we committed our forces to Afghanistan for 20 years," Brennan concluded.

Amnesty International Australia Refugee Advisor Dr Graham Thom slammed Australia for only taking 3,000 Afghan refugees.

"This is a huge crisis which has only just begun. 3,000 places is a start, but it's wholly insufficient when we have so many people in urgent, desperate need," Thom said.

Sources

Sky News Australia

The Daily Mail

New Zealand Herald

After mass, she expressed her displeasure that Pope Francis had announced changes to the Code of Canon Law, lumping together the issues of child sexual abuse and women's ordination.

I had not read the changes nor the rationale for same. Hearing her characterization of the matter, I said, 'I can understand your frustration.' She promptly retorted, 'It's not frustration; it's anger. You have to understand how hard it is for us women to remain.'

Canon law has never been a favourite subject of mine. I thought I had better get up to speed.

In 1994, Pope John Paul II solemnly declared 'that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful.'

In 1998, Pope John Paul II then amended the Code of Canon Law to provide that 'anyone who rejects propositions which are to be held definitively sets himself against the teaching of the Catholic Church'.

Anyone who obstinately rejected such a teaching and refused to retract when warned by their bishop was to be punished with a just penalty.

Pope Francis has now authorized a further change to the Code of Canon Law so that the obstinate non-retractor is to be punished with censure and deprivation of office. The canonical screws are being tightened.

Pope Francis has authorized a comprehensive re-write of Book VI of the Code of Canon Law which defines certain offences and sets down sanctions.

Quite rightly he has brought in a string of new offences against human life, dignity and liberty, dealing with child sexual abuse, grooming, pornography, and failing to report abuse.

He has also introduced a new suite of offences against the sacraments.

Until now the Code has dealt with those who are not ordained but who attempt to celebrate mass and those who purport to hear confessions though they are unable to give absolution.

The Code also had a more general provision providing for the punishment of an ineligible person pretending to administer a sacrament. Pope Francis has seen fit to move into the Code a provision (Canon 1379(3)):

'Both a person who attempts to confer a sacred order on a woman, and the woman who attempts to receive the sacred order, incur a latae sententiae excommunication reserved to the Apostolic See; a cleric, moreover, may be punished by dismissal from the clerical state.'

Understandably this has left many people upset, including the woman who sang at my ordination 36 years ago.

Why is there any need for a further specific penal provision to be added at this time to the Code of Canon Law, and at the same time as the much needed overdue legal reforms dealing with child sexual abuse? Why not leave things as they were?

This new provision in the Code might not only deal with someone purporting to ordain a woman as priest. It could also apply to anyone purporting to confer diaconate on a woman, and the punishment would also apply to the woman seeking the conferral of the sacred order.

For many years, there has been discussion about two distinct matters: the theological possibility of women priests and the historical evidence for women deacons in various branches of the Catholic Church.

Back in 1988, Cardinal Ratzinger, as he then was, spoke at an event in New York where he agreed 'that the God of philosophy is neither male nor female, and the God of theology is both'.

He told the audience that the matter of women's ministry as deacons or priests was under study by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

For how much longer can we turn them away?

In 2002, after 28 years of consideration of the matter, the International Theological Commission could not come to a definitive answer on the historical reality of women deacons concluding that 'it pertains to the ministry of discernment which the Lord established in his Church to pronounce authoritatively on this question.' Whatever that means!

In 2016, the International Union of Superiors General asked Pope Francis to consider the possibility of women deacons in the contemporary Church. He set up a commission.

On 7 May 2019, Pope Francis was asked about the work of the commission during a press conference on a flight back to Rome. He said: 'The commission was created and has worked for almost two years. They were all different, all "toads from different wells".

They all thought differently, but they have worked together and have agreed to a certain extent.

But, each of them has their own vision that does not agree with that of the others. And there they have stopped as a commission and each one is studying how to move forward.'

He concluded his answer by saying, 'we have reached a point and now each of the members is studying according to their thesis. This is good. Varietas delectat. (Variety delights!)'

Some months later, the participants in the Special Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon Region voted 137 to 30 in favour of the Pope investigating further the possibility of women deacons.

In his final address to the Synod, Pope Francis indicated that he welcomed 'the request to reconvene the Commission and perhaps expand it with new members in order to continue to study the permanent diaconate that existed in the early Church'.

One of those who served on the 2016 commission is the highly respected American theologian Phyllis Zagano.

Prior to her appointment, she published an academic article on 'Women Deacons in the Maronite Church' stating, 'Without question, women were ordained as deacons in many Eastern churches, as copious research demonstrates.'

Since completing her term on the papal commission, she has published a book entitled Women: Icons of Christ.

She concedes that 'the Church teaches women cannot be ordained as priests'. But she then states correctly: 'it does not teach definitively that women cannot be ordained deacons.'

She reminds us that 'Phoebe is the only person in Scripture with the descriptor "deacon" and that Paul did not feminise her title to "deaconess".' She concludes: 'That women deacons existed cannot be denied, nor can their participation in sacramental ministry.'

What troubles her most is that 'Beneath every objection to restoring women to the ordained diaconate is the suggestion that women cannot image Christ.'

For her, this is not only a scandal: 'it is the disfigurement on the entire Body of Christ' and it 'is probably formally heretical'.

I quote her because she spent years researching this topic before being appointed to the papal commission. She expressed such views before her appointment, and she has consistently expressed them since.

We who are called to share the bread of life believe that Jesus had to be human so that we might be saved. Being human, he had to be either male or female. He could not be both.

That did not mean that only half humanity could be saved. Nor did it mean that only half humanity could be 'icons of Christ'.

Zagano demonstrates in her researches that women were ordained deacons in situations when there was a need for women to minister particularly to women and girls.

They were 'included in the order of deacon, not only in the early church but at least until the twelfth century in the West (and the East up to modern times)'.

Back in 2012, Zagano said, 'at some point, however, bishops are going to have to answer the question the International Theological Commission attempted to answer.'

Having reflected on the writings of Zagano, I now more readily understand why the woman who spoke to me after Mass a couple of weeks ago was not just frustrated. She was angry and rightly so.

The question about women deacons deserves an answer now. Not even Pope John Paul II claimed to have closed the door on that one. The matter has been crying out for the discernment called for by the International Theological Commission in 2002.

Having given up on his first commission of 'toads from different wells' and having only recently set up his second commission on the matter, surely Pope Francis could have told the canon lawyers to stay their hand when it came to instituting a specific new offence in canon law dealing with the purported ordination of a woman deacon.

The canon lawyers had more than enough on their plate with new offences dealing with child sexual abuse.

Zagano takes heart that the Vatican official explaining why the new canonical provision was not confined specifically to priestly ordination said, 'If we come to a different theological conclusion, we will modify the norm.'

During the week, we celebrated the feast of St Mary Magdalene who in the Byzantine Liturgy is called 'the apostle to the apostles'.

I recall the cartoon of the bearded apostles greeting the women with the words, 'So ladies, thanks for being the first to witness and report the resurrection and we'll take it from here.'

It's the women like the one who spoke to me after Mass who still front up each Sunday offering us five barley loaves and two fish. For how much longer can we turn them away?

The people are hungry for the Bread of Life, and it's not just the women. It's time for a discerned decision that reflects the delightful variety of the faithful.

• Frank Brennan SJ is Rector of Newman College, a residential college for undergraduates and postgraduates within the University of Melbourne. He is a human rights lawyer. His latest book is 'Observations on the Pell Proceedings', Connor Court, 2021.
• Published in La Croix. Republished with permission.

One is in Germany and another is in Australia.

There seems little doubt that these conversations are only the first two of what will become dozens and dozens of conversations seeking to clarify what the Spirit is saying to the Churches.

The conversation in Germany has become quite complicated since Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich announced that he had submitted his resignation to the Pope on May 21.

Of course, Pope Francis can decline the offer of resignation.

Cardinal Marx has been one of Pope Francis' most forceful supporters and an advocate of the Synodal approach proposed by Pope Francis.

The declared reason for the resignation of Cardinal Marx is that his own position in Germany is untenable because of his membership of the leadership of the Church in his country that has badly mismanaged cases of sex abuse by the clergy.

How that all plays out and what impact it will have on the national Synod are matters of speculation at this point.

But what it clearly underlines is that Synods, Church governance and the Church's mission and purpose are about a lot more than its leaders, however, accomplished and distinguished.

Cardinal Marx is clearly saying that what the Church is facing in his country and of course elsewhere is the threat of driving itself off a cliff.

And at this point, the Germans are significant leaders in the response to Pope Francis' invitation to create in the Church a global community listening to what the Spirit is calling it to be.

It is not as though this is the first time the Church has ever had to manage such an invitation.

Church Councils are the most obvious examples of moments in the Church's life when the community of believers is invited to fall silent and listen to what God might be asking of it.

But there can be various realities that discourage Catholics from participating in processes and conversations about these matters that could be transformative for the Church.

First among the blockages occur when people - believers/the baptized/informed and intelligent Catholics - find out clearly and plainly that the apparent "consultation" is window dressing for a process whose outcomes have been decided and agreed by those who decide and agree on things - not by the participants

The second comes down to the realization that though they have been invited to participate in a conversation, what they have to offer is not valued, will not be listened to and is simply surplus to requirements.

The third comes down to exactly what a "synodal" conversation really is - not a vigorous exchange in a tutorial or a seminar but an exchange between searching believers who together are trying to hear the voice of the Spirit.

That search can lead to conflict as well-intentioned individuals develop perspectives and convictions across a spectrum and those perspectives and convictions can be at odds.

The temptation is to see such disagreements and contests as game stoppers, as insuperable blockages to progress especially among highly motivated and principled people.

Paradoxically, it is precisely the most highly motivated and principled who can become the most conflictive and most at odds.

And that is exacerbated if an attentive ear to the murmur of the Spirit is not there from the beginning.

Or, in other words, unless there is more in what's going on than the determination to win an argument.

In such contexts, being trapped in an ideology is the death of discernment. Ideologues have answers before they've heard the questions.

They don't need to listen, much less discern where the Spirit is calling the listeners to be.

There can be no doubt how challenging and difficult communal discernment is.

Doing it on the appropriate scale and remaining open to the numbing reach of the questions to be considered only emphasizes what a venture in faith the process is.

In today's Podcast, we address developments in Australia and Germany. Featuring in the podcast are:

• Lana Turvey-Collins who offers her view from the perspective as a key facilitator of discussions leading to and then conducted during Australia's Plenary Council;
• Patty Fawkner, leader of an Australian founded but now multinational religious congregation - the Benedictine inspired Sisters of the Good Samaritan, is an adult educator, with tertiary qualifications in arts, education, theology and spirituality.
• Frank Brennan is a Jesuit priest and Rector of Newman College in Melbourne and a leading commentator on Church and social and political issues.
• Michael Kelly is a Jesuit priest and publisher of the English edition of La Civilta Cattolica

In Matthew 18:15-20, he sets out the steps for reconciliation.

First, "if your brother does something wrong, go and have it out with him alone".

If that works, well and good.

If it doesn't, then call him to the table with a couple of others to help resolve the matter.

If that doesn't work, report the matter to the whole community.

If that doesn't work, show him the door. Expel him or excommunicate him.

In each of these steps, the Matthean community, recalling the words of Jesus, was following the traditional contours for conflict resolution in the Judaean world of their time.

Then comes the distinctive theological gloss from Jesus: "I tell you solemnly, whatever you bind on earth shall be considered bound in heaven; whatever you loose on earth shall be considered loosed in heaven."

Let's recall that earlier in the gospel at Capernaum, after Peter had made his profession of faith that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, Jesus had entrusted Peter with the keys of the kingdom: "Whatever you bind on earth shall be considered bound in heaven".

Now this power and commission is given to the whole community.

The scripture scholar Daniel Harrington says, "[T]hat power would seem to concern either the imposing (and lifting) of decrees of ex-communication or the forgiving (and not forgiving) of sins."

According to Harrington, this gospel passage "outlines a clear procedure designed to help the sinner recognise the sin and return to the community. It roots reconciliation and forgiveness of sins in God's mercy, and thus reveals the foolishness of those who try to set limits on their willingness to forgive others." (1)

In our Catholic tradition, the forgiveness of sins has been practised in recent times by the sacrament of confession whereby the penitent confesses their sins to a priest who is bound by the seal of confession.

Three years ago, I was called before the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse because I had published an article stating that in all my years as a priest, I had never heard the confession of a paedophile and never expected to.

I said that any information I gleaned in confession about child sexual abuse was unlikely to be of any forensic value to police, as a penitent behind a screen was unlikely to identify himself, his victim, or the time and place of any offence.

I said that any state abolition of the seal of confession would render it even more unlikely that a paedophile would ever present for confession, and would simply take away one very remote possibility that a paedophile might come seeking help which could result in the paedophile being convinced to turn himself in to the authorities.

I appeared at the Royal Commission alongside the respected canon lawyer Fr Ian Waters who explained that the seal of confession covered the sins of the penitent, but not other matters.

I agreed with Fr Waters.

I gave the example of a little girl Sally who comes to confession and tells me that she stole the jelly beans and that her stepfather did something nasty to her.

I said that I could never reveal or act upon Sally's confession of having stolen the jelly beans, but I could act on Sally's assertion about her stepfather in the same way as I could if the assertion were made outside confession.

It would be a matter of pastoral prudence and care for Sally and her family.

There was a difference of opinion on the panel, with the one bishop in attendance, Bishop Terence Curtin who was chair of the Bishops' Commission for Doctrine and Morals, varying his testimony to agree more with the position put by Fr Waters.

I put a suggestion:

Father Brennan: Could I suggest the appropriate course would be to have Bishop Terry's committee of the Bishops Conference put in a particular submission to you articulating what is the received theological view of the Catholic Church in Australia on the seal of the confessional?

Bishop Curtin: Yes.

The Chair: Will we get one view?

Bishop Curtin: Yes, you would.

Father Brennan: That's the advantage of a hierarchy, your Honour.

A panel of the most senior archbishops then appeared before the commission a fortnight later.

Like many, I expected that by then the bishops would have worked out a clear united position on the limits of the seal of confession.

They did not; they publicly disagreed.

The Royal Commission recommended new laws which would abolish the seal of confession.

Those laws have now been enacted.

The Royal Commission recommended that the Australian bishops consult with the Holy See to clarify whether "information received from a child during the sacrament of reconciliation that they have been sexually abused is covered by the seal of the confessional".

Awaiting this clarification, I have as far as possible avoided hearing individual confessions, unsuccessfully proposing to our bishops that we be permitted more often to practise the communal third rite of reconciliation.

On Friday the bishops finally published the Holy See's response that the seal includes "all the sins of both the penitent and others known from the penitent's confession, both mortal and venial, both occult and public, as manifested with regard to absolution and therefore known to the confessor by virtue of sacramental knowledge." (2)

They would say that the seal covers Sally's disclosure that she was abused by her stepfather.

Australian Catholic priests now need to consider three possible scenarios.

Scenario one

What happens if a penitent, now an adult, discloses in confession that he or she when a child was sexually abused by an adult?

In confession, I would simply urge the adult penitent to report the past offence to the relevant civil authorities.

I would not take any further action.

I would not foresee any problem with my complying with the state law while at the same time honouring the seal of confession.

Scenario two

What happens if a child penitent discloses in confession that he or she has been sexually abused by a named or identifiable adult? (3)

I would treat that information in the same way as if it were disclosed to me outside confession.

I would take appropriate action to set in train any mandatory reporting requirements of the state.

This would not be a breach of the seal of the confession as I understood the seal to be when I was ordained a priest 35 years ago.

It would not be a breach of the seal of confession as I have understood it to be, on receipt of competent canonical advice which I had sought a number of times in the lead up to the royal commission.

If my action were now deemed by the Holy See to be a breach of the seal, resulting in my ex-communication, I would take heart that Australia's one canonised saint Mary MacKillop was excommunicated for a time.

In good conscience, I could take no other path.

Scenario three

What happens if a penitent confesses child sexual abuse?

I would honour the seal of confession. I would not disclose the abuse to anyone.

I would be prepared conscientiously to refuse to comply with the new civil law on the basis that: it works an unwarranted interference with freedom of religion; it is a law which, if anything, will render children less safe; and it is a law which is unenforceable as a prosecution could occur only if the child abuser disclosed to authorities their confession.

As Justice Kennedy of the US Supreme Court would say, this law "seems inexplicable by anything but animus toward the class it affects". (4)

In my 35 years as a priest when the civil law honoured the seal of the confession, I never had a paedophile confess his sin to me in confession.

Now that the legal privilege over the seal has been withdrawn, I think it all but inconceivable that any abuse will be confessed.

Criminal lawyers, family lawyers and investigative journalists, all of whom continue to enjoy a privilege of non-disclosure, are far more likely than a priest in the confessional to hear the details of such abuse.

The only detailed human rights assessment made of the withdrawal of the privilege from priests was by retired Justice Dodds-Streeton who conducted an inquiry for the ACT Government investigating compliance with the ACT Human Rights Act 2004 which is supposed to guarantee "the freedom to demonstrate (one's) religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching, either individually or as part of a community and whether in public or private".

She concluded, "In our opinion, the imposition of an obligation to report child sexual abuse based on information obtained in or in connection with a religious confession is unlikely to result in many detections of, or successful prosecutions for, either child sexual abuse or breaches of the reporting obligation itself.

Where sexual abusers of children are Roman Catholics who would otherwise attend confession, they will probably avoid confession altogether; or alternatively, they may exploit the potential under the rite of confession prevalent in Australia to confess anonymously and non-specifically, in order to avoid disclosures that will lead to their detection or oblige the priest to report." (5)

If she had any experience of the Catholic rite of confession, she could have added that any penitent is likely to confess in such generic terms as to leave the confessor completely ignorant of all key details of any offence.

In future, I will do all I can to avoid ex-communication or breach of the civil law. But I will not put children at risk.

I urge our bishops and the participants at the forthcoming plenary council to consider changes to church law in Australia so as to enhance the protection of children and to make the sacrament of reconciliation more fit for purpose in a society which decries the scourge of child sexual abuse and which denies the prospect of rehabilitation of child sex offenders.

The Catholic Catechism notes: "The power to "bind and loose" connotes the authority to absolve sins, to pronounce doctrinal judgements, and to make disciplinary decisions in the Church." (6)

We need doctrinal judgements and disciplinary decisions which give the highest priority to the protection of innocent children.

Our bishops and the plenary council delegates should take as their starting point the Holy See's expressed desire to ‘spare no effort in collaborating with civil authorities to pursue every avenue to end the scourge of sexual abuse.'

Contrary to the received wisdom of our recent royal commission, I should add that I agree completely with the pastoral and prudential observation of the Holy See:

"It should be recalled also that the confessional provides an opportunity - perhaps the only one - for those who have committed sexual abuse to admit to the fact.

"In that moment the possibility is created for the confessor to counsel and indeed to admonish the penitent, urging him to contrition, amendment of life and the restoration of justice.

"Were it to become the practice, however, for confessors to denounce those who confessed to child sexual abuse, no such penitent would ever approach the sacrament and a precious opportunity for repentance and reform would be lost."

We all have a responsibility to confront and arrest the wickedness of child sexual abuse in our community and in our church.

We need to put children first.

We need to maintain the hope that every person is redeemable.

We must heed those words of Ezekiel:

If I tell the wicked, "O wicked one, you shall surely die",
and you do not speak out to dissuade the wicked from his way,
the wicked shall die for his guilt,
but I will hold you responsible for his death.
But if you warn the wicked,
trying to turn him from his way,
and he refuses to turn from his way,
he shall die for his guilt,
but you shall save yourself.

• Fr Frank Brennan SJ is the Rector of Newman College, Melbourne, a professor of law and the former CEO of Catholic Social Services Australia.
• Extract from homily, 6 September 2020.
  [1] Harrington, D. J. (2007). The Gospel of Matthew. (D. J. Harrington, Ed.) (Vol. 1, p. 272). Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press.[2] See https://www.catholic.org.au/images/Observations_of_the_Holy_See_to_the_Recommendations_of_the_Royal_Commission.pdf[3] Justice Dodds Stretton, Analysis Report: Implementation Of Royal Commission Into Institutional Responses To Child Sexual Abuse Recommendations Regarding The Reporting Of Child Sexual Abuse, With Implications For The Confessional Seal , 14 January 2019, notes at p. 79: ‘s 327(5) of the Crimes Act 1958 (Vic) and s 316A(2)(f) of the Crimes Act 1900 (NSW) provide for a defence if the victim of an alleged offence does not wish the information to be disclosed, provided that the alleged victim is over the age of 16 (under the Victorian offence) or 18 (under the New South Wales offence). The Victorian offence requires that the victim have capacity to make an informed decision about whether or not the information ought to be disclosed.'[4] Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620 (1996) at 632[5] Justice Dodds Stretton, Analysis Report: Implementation Of Royal Commission Into Institutional Responses To Child Sexual Abuse Recommendations Regarding The Reporting Of Child Sexual Abuse, With Implications For The Confessional Seal, 14 January 2019, page 24

  [6] Catechism of the Catholic Church, #553, at https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P1L.HT

The trial caused hurt to many people, most especially victims of child sexual abuse who thought the law was being rightly applied to put an errant Catholic bishop in the frame.

Wilson was charged under a provision of the New South Wales Crimes Act, section 316, which has hardly ever been used.

It's a provision which was introduced in 1990.

It was reviewed by the New South Wales Law Reform Commission in 1999 and comprehensively trashed.

Some commissioners thought the provision should be abolished. Others thought it should be retained.

But even they said, 'It must be accepted that the present provision is seriously flawed; to be brutal about it, it is in several crucial respects virtually meaningless.

In our view, the essential problem is not that the section's underlying philosophy is mistaken but that it breaches the fundamental rule that the criminal law be unambiguous.'

For all practical purposes, the provision has now been replaced by a much more sensible and workable provision, section 316A, which is designed to deal with failures to report child sexual abuse.

Robert Stone, the magistrate who tried Wilson's case, failed to apply the cumbersome section 316 appropriately.

But it's hard to blame Stone too much as the provision is so badly drafted that even a bench of Supreme Court judges would have trouble making sense of it. And Philip Wilson was always the wrong test case for this cumbersome, unworkable legislative provision.

The New South Wales Director of Public Prosecutions decided to charge Wilson with a very convoluted offence under section 316.

The charge related to the Archbishop's alleged failure to report information more than 33 years after an alleged child sexual assault by a priest Fr Fletcher, and 28 years after it was alleged that the victim Peter Creigh had told Wilson about the assault.

This was the charge:

'Between 12:01 am on 22/04/2004 and 11:59 pm on 07/01/2006 at East Maitland. Whereas James Fletcher in 1971 committed a serious indictable offence, namely, indecent assault of a male, aged 10 years old, Philip Edward WILSON between 22 April 2004 and 7 January 2006 at MAITLAND and elsewhere in the State of New South Wales, believing that Fletcher committed that offence and knowing that he had information which might be of material assistance in securing the prosecution of Fletcher for that offence, without reasonable excuse, failed to bring that information to the attention of a member of the New South Wales Police Force.'

By 22 April 2004, Fletcher was already before the courts, having been convicted of historic child sex offences.

He was in jail until his death on 7 January 2006.

All these years later, Wilson had no recollection of any such conversation with Creigh, saying that he thought he would have recalled such a graphic conversation if it had occurred.

Archbishop Philip Wilson

Wilson had legal advice from an expert in the law on child sexual abuse that any information he had would not have been of material assistance to the police all these years later.

After all, the police had already detained and charged Fletcher with offences for which they had more than hearsay evidence. Wilson argued that he had reasonable excuse for failing to bring any information to the attention of police.

The magistrate delivered a 59-page judgment.

He messed up the law, and did not even consider some of the key legal questions necessary to secure a conviction.

And he took a very dim view of Wilson's credibility.

It was the magistrate's adverse findings on Wilson's credibility together with Wilson's earlier refusal to assist with police inquiries and the unpublished adverse findings against him by Commissioner Margaret Cunneen which convinced me that Wilson's continued role as Archbishop of Adelaide was unsustainable.

The magistrate was very favourably impressed by the credibility of Peter Creigh.

He was also impressed by the credibility of some other witnesses who said they had told Wilson similar things all those years ago.

For example, the magistrate was convinced beyond reasonable doubt that a witness who was another of Fletcher's victims had told Wilson in confession in 1976 about the abuse he suffered.

This penitent was sure it was Wilson in the confessional because he could see his big red lips behind the confessional grille and he recognised Wilson as the priest with the booming voice.

In relation to this witness, the magistrate said, 'I find that he gave reliable evidence. This is despite his evidence being contradicted by Mr Creigh's evidence that the accused did not have a distinctive voice or very red lips.'

The magistrate resolved this conflict of evidence by observing that the penitent witness said Wilson 'wasn't using a "booming voice" in the confessional'.

The magistrate was convinced beyond reasonable doubt saying, 'I find that a conversation occurred in the confession box in late 1976 as recounted by (the witness) in his testimony in the court and the accused heard the account.'

The magistrate's decision was riddled with these sorts of errors.

Members of the public have generally been unable to assess the magistrate's judgment because the court made it available only at the Newcastle court registry.

The only way you could read it was to travel to Newcastle and you were not permitted to copy any part of it.

You could only take notes.

I did that and wrote to the New South Wales Attorney General more than four months ago with a couple of suggested reforms:

• First, when the court delivers a judgment which contains material which might identify particular persons entitled not to have their identities published, the court should provide a means whereby interested persons might gain access to a redacted copy of the judgment in the same way as they would have access to any other judgment of the Magistrates Court, while ensuring the anonymity of all persons entitled to a suppression order.
• Second, when the court delivers a judgment (especially when outside Sydney) which is said to be a 'world first' and 'of international significance', the court should ensure that the judgment is accessible not just to those media outlets and interest groups with the resources or proximity to the local court where the decision is delivered. At the very least, a copy of the judgment should be made available in Sydney.

My letter did not even warrant an acknowledgment from the Hon. Mark Speakman SC MP.

The reforms have not been instituted.

Like Stone, the appeal judge, Judge Roy Ellis found: 'Creigh was an honest witness doing his best to recall events in 1976'.

Wilson received a much more sympathetic hearing on his appeal to Ellis of the District Court.

Unlike Stone, Ellis said, 'I have closely considered the evidence of the Appellant (Wilson) and concluded that there is no legitimate basis to reject his evidence.

'In conjunction with the other evidence in the case the evidence of the appellant raises a reasonable doubt in my mind that in 2004-6 the appellant had a memory of a conversation in 1976 in which Mr Peter Creigh told him that James Fletcher had indecently assaulted him.'

In relation to any 1976 conversation between Creigh and Wilson, Ellis concluded, 'I am not satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that Philip Wilson had a memory of it in 2004-6'.

Even if such a conversation had taken place and even if Wilson did have a memory of it three decades later, Ellis also had 'a reasonable doubt as to whether (Wilson) formed any belief, be it belief or disbelief, as to the truth or otherwise of the allegation'.

Abuse survivor Peter Gogarty

There is already talk of further appeals.

But no appeal court hereafter has any power to interfere with Ellis' findings on the credibility of the witnesses including Wilson.

Let's hope emotions can settle.

Law reformers should do their work. Section 316 should be repealed or comprehensively overhauled.

Wilson has done the right thing and resigned as Archbishop of Adelaide.

He should be left in peace.

As I said almost two years ago in my address to the Australian Lawyers Alliance, the charge was unwarranted and unlikely to be proved.

Everyone, including the victims of abuse and church officials like Wilson, is entitled to be governed by laws which are clear, sensible and practical. Section 316 is not, and never has been.

The DPP would be well advised to leave section 316 out of all future proceedings.

The Wilson show trial on section 316 should not be repeated.

And I would see little point in the DPP appealing the District Court decision.

Section 316 is a dead letter, and it causes nothing but trouble to everyone involved.

The road to truth, justice and healing will not be found via any more prosecutions under the derelict section 316.

I hope and pray that Peter Creigh and Philip Wilson might one day be reconciled.

In this instance, the processes of the criminal law have inflicted great harm on each of them.

• Frank Brennan SJ, a former Professor of Law at the Australian Catholic University is currently CEO of Catholic Social Services Australia.
• First published in Eureka Street. Repbulished with permission.
• Images: AAP, SMH,

We are unlikely as a Church or as a society to get this right for quite some years to come.

Unlike the apology to the stolen generations or the apology for forced adoptions, this apology will be delivered in the hope that those from institutions which have done wrong stay away or at least not be publicly identifiable.

The government website states:

'The national apology is a day for survivors, families and supporters.

"Community consultations have made it clear that representatives from institutions in official attire risk traumatising survivors.

"Accordingly, institutions will not be represented at the national apology in Canberra.

"Members of institutions who wish to attend apology events in their personal capacity as a survivor, or as a support person to a survivor, are respectfully asked to not wear a uniform or any clothing that identifies their institution."

So let's continue to feel shame as members of the Church and let's recommit to justice, truth and healing.

As we look at our church structures and the past cover ups or downplaying of abuse that occurred, let's take to heart Jesus' words in today's gospel (Mark chapter 10 verses 35-45):

'You know that those who are recognised as rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones make their authority over them felt.

But it shall not be so among you.

Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all.'

We are fortunate that our bishops finally agreed to release the reports of our Truth Justice and Healing Council.

One of those reports contained personal testimonies by members of the Council.

This evening, I would like to quote from just four of those testimonies. I will not quote any bishop. I will not quote any man. Let me just quote from four of the women on the council.

Maria Harries, who is a professor of social work and the chair of my board at Catholic Social Services Australia, said:

'I still need to be convinced that the structures of the church implicated in their permitting of such abuse and the protection of perpetrators will really reform itself. Change is obligatory, and it is differentially confronting and frightening for various elements of our church. The recognition of the problems we face as a church is a good start to finding solutions.'

Marian Sullivan, a child psychiatrist, said:

'The royal commission has challenged many parts of Australian society and its institutions.

"The Catholic Church has been scrutinised extensively and critiqued harshly.

"As a member of the Council I have moved from a disposition of disappointment with the Church to one of satisfaction that the Church represented by the Council has unflinchingly faced the shame of its past behaviour and any inadequacies of redress.

"Although not widely acknowledged, the cooperation that the Council gave to the royal commission has been exemplary and is proof of our resolve.'

Maree Marsh, a Brigidine Sister and psychologist, said:

'The church cannot undo all of the harm done in the past, but it has the responsibility to do all that is within its power to create an environment in which people will treat other people with respect, dignity and justice.

"The healing that is necessary involves a long process and will take courage, compassion, openness and patience.

"Above all it will take faith — faith in one another and faith that God is with us in this journey.'

This evening whether victim, relative, bystander, or church official we can all identify with the suffering servant in Isaiah (Isaiah chapter 53 verses10-11):

The Lord was pleased to crush him in infirmity.

If he gives his life as an offering for sin, he shall see his descendants in a long life, and the will of the Lord shall be accomplished through him.

'Because of his affliction he shall see the light in fullness of days; through his suffering, my servant shall justify many, and their guilt he shall bear.'

May the Lord have mercy on us all.

May the day come when church officials and victims will be comfortable in each other's presence in our Parliament even if not in our Church.

But let's dare to pray that all might belong both in the galleries of our Parliament and in the pews of our Church seeing the light in fullness of days.

• Fr Frank Brennan SJ is the CEO of Catholic Social Services Australia. A former professor of law at Australian Catholic University and Adjunct Professor at the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture the above text is taken from is his homily for the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Holy Trinity Catholic Church, Curtin.
• Originally published in Eureka Street. Republished with permission of author.

The interview concerned Archbishop Philip Wilson's refusal to stand down as Archbishop of Adelaide after his conviction for concealing child sex abuse.

One of Australia's leading radio personalities, the ever-popular Laws comments regularly on issues impacting life in Australia.

Frank Brennan is a Jesuit priest, academic and human rights lawyer.

Once dubbed by Paul Keating, then Australian Prime Minister as "the meddling priest," Brennan, for some time, has almost been a lone voice among Australian clergy calling for Wilson's resignation.

A professor of Law in Public Policy at the Australian Catholic University and visiting professional fellow at the University of New South Wales, in 1995 Brennan was appointed as an Officer of Australia.

The award recognised his service to Aboriginal Australians, particularly as an advocate in the areas of law, social justice and reconciliation.

He now serves as CEO of Catholic Social Services Australia.

Introducing Brennan's interview, Laws said the Catholic Church stands condemned for its 'stupid' refusal to dump convicted criminal Archbishop Philip Wilson.

Laws suggested the Church is 'losing the plot', certainly 'not making friends' and the Church should be leaning on Wilson to resign.

"Can you think of any other workplace environment where somebody who is convicted of concealing child sex abuse could ever hold out hope of returning of their former role?" asked Laws.

Calling it a damning indictment of Wilson, Laws said, years ago, Wilson had the chance to speak up for children and failed to do so.

Expressing surprise at the Church's attitude, Laws said the event gives the Church an opportunity to speak up for victims and 'front foot' the battle of child sex abuse.

In a hard-hitting introduction, Laws says he is not surprised the confidence in the Catholic Church is eroding and he suggests it will continue to be eroded unless it picks up its act.

After the interview, the veteran broadcaster concludes saying he enjoyed talking with Brennan, calling Brennan "a refreashing priest" and "a delightful fellow".

He complemented Brennan on his knowledge and that he is prepared to speak his mind.

To listen, press the play icon (below left) on the audio bar.

Sources

• Radio 2SM
• News.com.au

The ban was announced after Fr Frank Brennan SJ defended Catholics' right to speak according to their conscience about the issue.

He had been invited to speak at a CatholicCare Tasmania conference in February.

Archbishop Julian Porteous says Brennan may not attend advertised speaking events because of his advocacy for religious freedom regarding same-sex marriage.

Porteous's decision was met with surprise by former Catholic priest Paul Collins.

"It is not as though Frank were some raging radical, he is a person who runs all of the Catholic Church's social services in the country," he says.

Mr Collins says Porteous, who holds opposite views to Brennan regarding same-sex marriage, is out of touch with mainstream Catholics.

"Frank Brennan's views on same-sex marriage are absolutely the views of the majority of Catholics in Australia. I voted yes," he says.

"All the evidence points to the fact that the vast majority of Catholic's voted 'yes' and a number of the other Catholic bishops voted 'yes'.

Collins says Australia is a pluralistic democracy, "and in a pluralistic democracy, people are able to express their views in public.

"What it does is reinforce the notion that bishops live, somehow or other, in cloud-cuckoo-land."

Source

• SkyNews
• ABC
• Image: Australian Marriage Equality

The non-binding referendum drew 7.8 million for same-sex marriage and 4.9 million against.

Australian Catholic Bishops Conference president Archbishop Denis Hart says parliament must work to unify Australians by respecting different views on marriage.

"The Catholic Church, and many others who sought to retain the definition of marriage ... continues to view marriage as a special union between a woman and a man ..." he says.

"A change in civil law does not change the Catholic understanding of the nature of marriage."

Chief executive of Catholic Social Services, Frank Brennan SJ, doesn't think the clear "yes" vote will make Parliament's job easier.

Last Thursday, while the votes were still coming in, he said: "The present mess of Australian politics will not help as our politicians work out how and when to legislate the change.

"Already, there are different proponents for different private members' bills which could be presented first in either House of Parliament."

Brennan wrote about the issue on the Jesuit-operated Eureka Street website.

"Those who have campaigned loudest and longest for a 'no' vote have emphasised threats to other human rights, most especially the right to freedom of conscience, religion and belief. But they are not the only ones ...

"The Senate Select Committee ... [noted]: 'There was common ground between many groups on the need for positive protection for religious freedom.

"'The Human Rights Law Centre and other organisations in support of same-sex marriage recognised the need for Australian law to positively protect religious freedom.'The issue of religious freedom must be addressed'."

Brennan went on to quote Anna Brown, who is Director of the Human Rights Law Centre and former Spokeswoman for the Equality Campaign:

"Religious freedom should be protected in law. Indeed, we are on record in a number of inquiries supporting the addition of religious belief to protections under federal anti-discrimination law."

The UN Human Rights Committee in Geneva is also concerned, Brennan says. In a recent report, the Committee was bothered by "the lack of direct protection against discrimination on the basis of religion at the federal level ...".

The Committee also noted "a parliamentary inquiry on the status of the human right to freedom of religion or belief is underway."

"No" voters are also concerned about religious freedom.

They argue protections for freedom of religion should be inserted in the amended Marriage Act, especially to ensure:

• the right to refuse to conduct same-sex marriages
• protection for employees
• protection for churches as employers and property holders
• protection for churches as educators
• protection for parents' and guardians' right to teach their children according to their religious faith
• protection for parents' and guardians' right to spare their children teachings inconsistent with their religious faith.

Source

• Catholic Leader
• The Tablet
• Eureka Street
• Vicky Beeching.com

Appearing on the ABC's 7.30 program last Thursday, after The Guardian's release of 2000 incident reports from Nauru, the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection Peter Dutton told Leigh Sales, "I would like to get people off Nauru tomorrow but I have got to do it in such a way that we don't restart boats."

He went on to say, "We have had discussions with a number of other countries, but what we're not going to do is enter into an arrangement that sends a green light to people smugglers."

Dutton appreciates that Nauru and Manus Island are ticking time bombs.

During the election campaign, Malcolm Turnbull said that we could not be misty-eyed about the situation on these islands, a situation of Australia's making and a situation funded recurrently with the Australian cheque book. Now that the election is over, neither our politicians nor their strategic advisers can afford wilfully to close their eyes to the situation.

The majority of asylum seekers on Nauru and Manus Island have now been proved to be refugees. They are not going to accept cheques to go back home and face renewed persecution. That's why they fled in the first place. Most of these people have had their lives on hold, in appalling circumstances, for over three years.

It's time to act. Ongoing inaction will send a green light to desperate people to do desperate things.

While respecting those refugee advocates and their supporters who cannot countenance stopping the boats coming from Indonesia, I think it is time to see if we can design a way of getting the asylum seekers off Nauru and Manus Island "in such a way that we don't restart boats," ensuring that we continue to send a red light to people smugglers in Java. Continue reading

• Father Frank Brennan, S.J. is Professor of Law at the Australian Catholic University.

If true, the allegations are devastating:

• life ruining for victims like Damian Dignan and Lyndon Monument;
• confronting for all citizens committed to the wellbeing of children; and
• earth shattering for Catholics who still have faith in their church.

The ABC report is also troubling for those of us concerned about due process and the rule of law.

Due process, not as academic notions for lawyers but as the secure bulwarks of a society in which everyone's rights and interests are protected.

With the benefit of hindsight, we can all say it would have been better if onlookers like Les Tyak in the Torquay Surf Club claiming to have credible evidence of unseemly behaviour by an adult like George Pell towards children went to the police promptly, rather than waiting 30 years.

As it was put on 7.30, 'One summer day, [Mr Tyak] says he witnessed a strange incident, so strange it later compelled him to go to police.'

The incident is alleged to have occurred in the mid-1980s. Mr Tyak went to the police in 2015.

Attention on George Pell like no other

George Pell has been the focus of attention, like no other, during the long running Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

He has been grilled publicly for days on end about what he knew and did not know about abuse committed by others when he was a priest in Ballarat and when auxiliary bishop in Melbourne.

The Commission has been so focused on Pell that they decided to make the abuse of the late Fr Peter Searson their primary focus when investigating the abuse by Melbourne priests.

This was not because Searson was the worst abuser, but because he worked in the region of the Archdiocese where Pell had supervision as auxiliary bishop.

The commission went to great lengths to reconvene and to call witnesses from the Catholic Education Office to highlight that there was no deliberate attempt to keep information from Pell.

In the course of the inquiry, it became clear that the officers from the Catholic Education Office did not provide Pell with detailed information about Searson's wrongdoings. They saw no point.

So then the focus moved to Pell's rationalisation as to why he was not given relevant information. Whether or not that rationalisation was correct was a matter of intense media interest, though a matter of minimal forensic importance.

So now before the royal commission reports on what Pell knew or did not know about the abuse by others and what he did or did not do in response to that abuse, we have this television report of allegations of abuse by Pell himself.

Dealing with the allegations

There are three ways in which such allegations of abuse by a Catholic official can be treated.

The first way is the path of criminal investigation and prosecution.

The allegations can be reported to police; police can investigate; police can then refer the matter to the Office of Public Prosecutions.

Until charges are laid, it is customary not to publicise allegations, particularly when the allegations relate to child sexual abuse.

The second way is for the victim to make a complaint under the Church's Towards Healing process.

If a credible complaint is received and if it involves criminal behaviour, it will normally be referred to the police, and the church official will be stood down while inquiries are concluded.

Neither of these ways has been pursued in the instance of these allegations of abuse by George Pell.

The second path was followed in 2002 when an unnamed man came forward to allege that Pell had fondled him inappropriately in much the same way as alleged last night by Damian Dignan and Lyndon Monument.

Pell was stood aside until a retired judge who conducted the inquiry concluded:

I accept ... that the complainant, when giving evidence of molesting, gave the impression that he was speaking honestly from an actual recollection. However, the respondent, also, gave me the impression that he was speaking the truth. In the end, and notwithstanding that impression of the complainant, bearing in mind the forensic difficulties of the defence occasioned by the very long delay, some valid criticism of the complainant's credibility, the lack of corroborative evidence and the sworn denial of the respondent, I find I am not 'satisfied that the complaint has been established'.

Pell then returned to office.

Being cleared, he was further promoted in the Church and he is presently a cardinal and the Secretary of the Economy in the Vatican and one of Pope Francis's trusted inner cabinet of nine cardinals who provide regular papal advice.

The third path is a mixture of regular policing, police leaks, and media speculation pursued by police and others who are not convinced that the two regular paths will produce an appropriate outcome.

This path is particularly problematic when it involves the Victoria Police under the leadership of its commissioner Graham Ashton and the Catholic Church under the leadership of Cardinal George Pell.

The history is poisonous

The well of good relations has been poisoned at three stages.

When Pell became archbishop of Melbourne in 1996 he moved promptly to set up the Melbourne Response. This Response was drawn up in close consultation with the Victorian government and the Victoria Police.

The close working relationship between the church and the police fell apart at the Victorian Parliament's Inquiry into The Handling of Child Abuse by Religious and Other Organisations.

A key witness was Graham Ashton who was later to promoted to police commissioner.

Ashton complained about the Church protocol and tried to distance the Victoria Police from it.

It's sufficient to quote the parliamentary committee's final report:

As far as the Committee is aware, Victoria Police made no complaint about the absence of reports and made no request for a review of the protocol for at least 12 years. It is clear that Victoria Police paid inadequate attention to the fundamental problems of the Melbourne Response arrangements until relatively recently in April 2012 and that, when they did become the subject of public attention, Victoria Police representatives endeavoured quite unfairly to distance the organisation from them.

The second poisoning of the well occurred in February 2016 when Pell was due to give evidence from Rome to the royal commission.

There was a timely string of leaks of information adverse to Pell. The information could only have originated from the Victoria Police.

The information related to allegations of sexual abuse by Pell, and not just to allegations of cover up by Pell of the abuse committed by others.

If true, the allegations were fatal to Pell's public standing and position in the Church hierarchy.

The media spoke of 'calls by detectives to be given the green light "as soon as possible" to fly to Rome to interview Cardinal George Pell'.

We were told, 'The Sunday Herald Sun understands senior Victoria Police are assessing the dossier of evidence collected by the Sano team in the past year, including witness statements from alleged victims.'

That newspaper claimed that 'legal sources (plural) revealed Sano Taskforce members were "highly motivated but frustrated"'.

The source (now singular) was reported as saying that the Sano investigators wanted to go to Rome to interview Pell 'but that the ultimate decision isn't down to them. It is with senior figures who will have to give them the go-ahead.'

Pell calls allegations scurrilous; blames Victorian police

Pell denied the allegations, said they were scurrilous and that they emanated from the Victoria Police.

Pell issued a statement saying that 'the Victorian Police have never sought to interview him in relation to any allegations of child sexual abuse', and he 'called for a public inquiry into the leaking of these spurious claims by elements in the Victorian Police'.

In February, Pell then wrote to acting Police Minister Robin Scott requesting an investigation into how the details became public.

Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton referred the matter to Victoria's Independent Broad-based Anti-Corruption Commission (IBAC). The Attorney General said, 'Under the act that's the appropriate place for that matter to be dealt with.'

IBAC claims that it informs all complainants of the outcome of their complaint within two months.

Here we are five months later and there has still been no word from the Victoria government, the Victoria police or any other government agency about the leaks.

Pell's original complaint remains unaddressed.

IBAC says that if a complaint is outside its jurisdiction, the matter can be considered by the Victoria Police's Professional Standards Command; the police investigating themselves.

So now we come to the third dose of poison added to the well, on last night's ABC 7.30.

Mr Ashton has still not told us where the leaks came from.

He has still not allowed the Sano Taskforce to travel to Rome to interview Pell despite Pell indicating his availability.

A week before the 7.30 program went to air, Pell issued a statement which remains uncontested:

No request has been made to interview Cardinal Pell nor has he received any details of these claims from the police or anyone. In late May the Cardinal was advised by the SANO Taskforce that there had been no change in the status of the investigation since the leaks were first reported.

Today Pell has issued a further statement:

Nearly six months ago media outlets carried leaked stories of allegations against the Cardinal which were said to have been under investigation by the Victorian SANO Taskforce for over 12 months. Despite this there has been no requests made by the Taskforce to interview the Cardinal and the Victorian Police Commissioner confirmed last month that no request to interview the Cardinal had been proposed to him as necessary.

Justice and proper policing

If Damian Dignan, Lyndon Monument and George Pell are to receive justice, Graham Ashton should commission his SANO Taskforce to travel to Rome immediately to interview Pell and the Victorian Government should take resolute action to demand that Ashton get to the bottom of the leaks and explain what involvement there has been by Victoria police officers, including disaffected members of the SANO Taskforce.

More police obfuscation and media titillation merely risks undermining the standing and outcomes of the present royal commission and further unnecessary suffering for victims seeking justice and closure — to say nothing of the reputation of citizens like Pell, though I do think that remains a relevant consideration in a country under the rule of law.

Make no mistake, if Pell is a child abuser, I want him out of the Vatican and out of the way of children.

But if he's not, I want the Victoria Police to come clean and get back to routine policing, rather than media titillation, for the wellbeing of all of us, especially Damian Dignan and Lyndon Monument.

If I were to meet Damian or Lyndon, I would offer the gratuitous advice: your complaints need to be investigated competently and prosecuted appropriately; I'm sorry if police leaks and media publicity have caused you added pain and despair.

This whole saga wreaks of injustice and incompetent policing. And we all pay the cost of that.

• Fr Frank Brennan SJ is professor of law at Australian Catholic University and Adjunct Professor at the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture.
• Originally published in Eureka Street. Republished with permission of author.
• Image: Queensland Council for Civil Liberties

The head of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Justice Peter McClellan, told a victims' group he had written to the Vatican on the matter.

He sought copies of all documents relating to complaints about abuse involving priests in Australia.

The Vatican has provided two sets of documents to the royal commission, and said it may provide others where copies are not available in Australia.

But Justice McClellan wanted more information to find out how the church hierarchy in Australia, under the guidance or direction of the Vatican, responded to the allegations of abuse.

In a written response, the Vatican told the commission "that requests for all information regarding every case - which include requests for documents reflecting internal ‘deliberations' - are not appropriate".

It said the Holy See maintained the confidentiality of internal deliberations related to its judicial and administrative proceedings.

The reason was it "depends upon deliberative confidentiality to ensure the integrity and efficacy of its judicial and administrative processes".

Western Australian Liberal MP Steve Irons said he would ask the federal government to become involved in the matter.

Leonie Sheedy, founder and chief executive of CLAN, a support group for victims of child sexual abuse, said the actions of the Holy See showed the Catholic Church was treating the Australian public with contempt.

Last month, Archbishop Philip Wilson of Adelaide told the royal commission that the Vatican's Congregation for Clergy hindered bishops' efforts to deal with abusive priests in the 1990s.

Justice McClellan used his address to defend the continuing work of the commission against commentary that was "ill-informed" on its practices and impacts.

This followed comments by Catholic lawyer and Jesuit Fr Frank Brennan last week that the commission was paralysing agencies trying to deal with child sexual abuse.

Fr Brennan said that if the commission ran for another three and a half years, institutions such as the Catholic Church and state agencies would be left in limbo, unable to implement change until the commission reported.

The royal commission has asked the Australian government that it be able to extend its work until the end of the 2017.

Sources

• Sydney Morning Herald
• The Guardian
• ABC
• Image: Perth Now

Father Frank Brennan who is professor of law at the Australian Catholic University believes a deterrent is needed in the border protection policy mix but thinks that has to involve Malaysia and Indonesia.

He believes the deal reached with Nauru was clearly designed with the election in mind.

Earlier, commenting on the agreement reached with Papua New Guinea, Brennan said both major parties are trashing regional relationships for electoral gain and that the High Court could overturn the PNG plan.

Speaking on an ABC Panel with the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and the Leader of the Opposition Tony Abbott, Brennan said the asylum policy was like a nuclear deterrent. "You threaten to do mean and nasty things in the hope that you will never have to do them."

But he doubts such a policy will work because it "would seem that a lot of the work that would be needed for such a proposal to work has not been done."

"For example, it seems now the Indonesians were not even formally notified, let alone consulted and where in the first instance the understanding was that children would not be sent, we're now to be told that children are to be sent to a dreadful malaria infested place like Manus Island. I think that sort of thing is just morally unacceptable."

Source

• ABC Radio
• Radio Australia
• Image: Screen Shot ABC

Fr. Frank Brennan, a noted jurist, said in a report by The Sydney Morning Herald that the "Church cannot be left alone to get its house in order".

"Where there is a social organisation within the democracy with a proven and self-admitted case of ongoing criminal activity, and it's related to very vulnerable children, the state should intervene," he said.

Brennan said that as politicians decided how to proceed they needed the help of "lawyers committed to justice, not lawyers acting primarily to protect the church or to condemn it".

He said it was too early to say what form state intervention should take, adding that the Victorian inquiry and current inquiry by retired judge Antony Whitlam in NSW would give guidance.

Brennan was less pessimistic than RMIT professor and former priest Desmond Cahill about the church's ability to reform itself.

"As we say in the church, 'semper reformanda' (always to be reformed). It's always reforming. Whether it can do it without other assistance, the jury is out," he said.

Cahill told the Victorian inquiry that about one in 20 Catholic priests was a child abuser, far more than in other churches or religions.

Brennan said in his oration that if there were particular problems in the Catholic Church they needed to be identified for the good of all citizens, not just Catholics.

"At the moment, there is little more that any Catholic priest can credibly say on this issue in the public square. I make this plea to all lawyers having a commitment to justice. While putting aside any religious prejudice, please contribute fearlessly to the debate," he said.

Sources

• The Sydney Morning Herald
• Eureka Street
• Image: The Sydney Morning Herald

Fr Brennan gave his personal reflections on Catholic education and social justice, Vatican II and Catholic education 50 years on, contemporary faith and "some guideposts for re-imagining the mission", among other things. He said that greater transparency in the Church will do nothing but good for the Church.

• Read Fr Frank Brennan SJ's article
• Image: Trends Updates