Furore at Pell view on abuse

CATHOLICS faced a fresh furore over sexual abuse yesterday after reports that Sydney Archbishop George Pell described it as less of a crime than abortion.
  According to Canada's national Globe and Mail newspaper, Dr Pell made the comments to Roman Catholic delegates at a World Youth Day forum in Toronto.
  Catholic Archbishop of Perth Barry Hickey was at the forum.
  Dr Pell's comments caused an outcry in the Canadian media.
  His office in Sydney refused to comment on the report yesterday.
  Sydney's Catholic media office said Dr Pell had "gone on retreat" and would not be able to be contacted until he returned to Australia at the end of the week.
  WA Catholic Church communications officer Hugh Ryan said he did not know the context in which Dr Pell made the comment.
  "The Church does not run a league table of how serious things are," Mr Ryan said. "But I presume the Archbishop was attempting to make the point that sexual abuse harms a child but abortion kills a child."
  Sydney-based child protection advocate Hetty Johnston said the comments were outrageous. A royal commission should be established to expose how endemic the child sex abuse was.

[Picture of man wearing glasses and clerical collar] Archbishop Pell: Views shock child supporters

  "It's so disappointing that with everything that's happened over the last 12 months, it appears that the (Catholic Church) leaders still don't get it," Ms Johnston, who runs victim support network Bravehearts, said yesterday.
  Advocates for Survivors of Child Abuse WA spokeswoman Michelle Stubbs said surviving child abuse was a matter of life or death.
  Almost 85 per cent of about 500 survivors or child abuse recently surveyed within her organisation reported they had attempted suicide.
  Ms Stubbs said she did not believe a royal commission into abuse in the Church would effectively address the problem of child sexual abuse, which occurred mostly within families. Just 7 per cent of abuse occurred in the Church.
  The Globe and Mail said Dr Pell told his audience that abortion was a worse moral scandal than priests sexually abusing young people.
  When asked to clarify, he said: "Because it's (abortion) always a destruction of human life," the paper reported.
  Catholic lawyer Geoff Cahill said only an independent body was fit to investigate complaints of abuse against children and young people, given the insensitive attitude that still appeared to prevail in the Church.
  "This does demonstrate a grave misunderstanding of the whole issue of sexual abuse in the Church," he said. "It sounds less like theology and more like damage control."
  Mr Cahill, who has provided legal advice, counselling and representation to victims of sexual abuse for 10 years, said Dr Pell's comparison of abortion and sexual abuse was nonsense.
  Since the early 1990s he had lost one client victim to suicide, and countless others had tried to kill themselves as a result of their abuse at the hands of the clergy.
  "The paedophile can not only kill the soul of the victim and the victim's family, but also kill the victim," he said.
  Pope John Paul II, who was in Canada for World Youth Day, said the sexual abuse scandals rocking his Church caused "a deep sense of sadness and shame". But he urged Catholic youth to support the vast majority of priests who did good. -- AUSTRALIAN ASSOCIATED PRESS