Vatican City
Our Source: The Huffington Post
VATICAN CITY (RNS) One of the most powerful men in the Vatican, charged with cleaning up corruption and fostering financial reform, has outraged survivors of sex abuse by clergy by likening the church to a trucking company that refuses to take responsibility for a driver who molested women.
Cardinal George Pell, a member of Pope Francis’ advisory Council of Cardinals, was appointed the Vatican’s first economic prefect early this year by a pontiff who openly admires his “tenacity.”
But the former archbishop of Sydney has been unable to put Australia’s clerical sex abuse scandal behind him since his move to Rome.
Victim support groups expressed their anger this week after Pell gave video testimony from the Vatican to an Australian government inquiry looking into responses to child sex abuse by the Catholic Church and other institutions.
Using a hypothetical example, Pell said the church was no more responsible for cases of child abuse carried out by church figures than a trucking company would be if it employed a driver who molested women.
“It would not be appropriate, because it’s contrary to the policy, for the ownership, leadership of that company to be held responsible,” Pell told the inquiry. “Similarly with the church and the head of any other organization.
“It is, I think, not appropriate for legal culpability to be foisted on the authority figure.”
Categories: Catholic Church, Catholicism, Europe and Australia