16/01/2023
The National Secular Society reports in its weekly bulletin: Cardinal George Pell has died aged 81. He had been criticised for suggesting "abortion was a worse moral failing than Catholic clergy abusing children, describing contraception as a “heresy” and actively lobbying the Australian government against the legalisation of same-sex marriage." The Guardian newspaper further notes that “A royal commission into institutional child abuse in Australia published findings in 2020 that Pell had known of children being sexually abused within the archdiocese of Ballarat in the 1970s, and criticised him for not doing more to have paedophile priests removed from the church.” At the time of writing, neither the Atheist Association of Australia, nor LGBT+ Equality Australia had made any formal remarks on the passing of Cardinal Pell, but advocates for survivors of religious sexual abuse said that the reporting of Pell’s death could re-traumatise many of the Church’s victims.
