In 1917, when the Church codified its canon law, it threw out those decrees. That was written into canon law by Church decrees, particularly from the 12 th to the 16 th centuries. Leder agreed that the Church’s position was different to that of a company, and that it was “anachronistic.” On the other hand, the cover up of child sex abuse by the Church is not at all anachronistic, but very modern.įor 1500 years, the Church accepted that priests who sexually assault children should be punished by more than restrictions on ministry they should be dismissed from the priesthood and then punished in accordance with the civil law. Mary’s Cathedral.Įarlier, Justice McLellan suggested to the Church’s solicitor, Richard Leder, that the structure of the Catholic Church put it in a “privileged position”. Cardinal Freeman was incapable of being sued because he was resting in peace in the crypt of St. The only person who could be sued in that case was Cardinal Freeman who had been warned about Ellis’s abuser, and yet let him continue as a priest.

All of its billions are tucked away in a corporate trust that does nothing else than hold property.

Pell spent over $750,000 on lawyers in the Ellis case to prove that the Catholic Church was not like his trucking company, but is an unincorporated association that could not be sued. Those injured would have access to the company’s assets to meet any judgment, even if its directors or officials were dead or had no assets. If a trucking company had been remiss as he described, and people were injured as a result, the trucking company would be liable. Pell’s analogy revealed the fatal flaw in his own argument the moment he used the word “company”.

Pell conceded that “if in fact the authority figure has been remiss through bad preparation, bad procedures or been warned and done nothing or insufficient, then certainly the church official would be responsible.” It should not be held responsible for the crimes of its priests in the same way as the “ownership or leadership” of a trucking company is not responsible if one of its drivers picks up a hitchhiker and molests her. In his video appearance before the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on 21 August 2014, the former Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, insisted that the Catholic Church should be treated like every other organisation in society.

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