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New revelations with new foreword by Tom Keneally.
Cardinal George Pell, Australia’s most powerful Catholic, was found guilty of five sexual crimes against children and has been sentenced to six years’ jail. He is the most senior Catholic figure in the world to be charged by police and convicted of child sex offences. The abuse involved choirboys at Melbourne’s St Patrick’s Cathedral.
George Pell was a Ballarat boy who studied at Oxford and rose through the Catholic Church ranks to become adviser to Pope Francis and Vatican treasurer. He has now been expelled from the Pope’s inner circle.
As an outspoken defender of Church orthodoxy, supported and championed by the powerful, Pell’s ascendancy was seemingly unstoppable.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse brought to light horrific stories about abuse of the most vulnerable. Pell portrayed himself as the first man in the Catholic Church to tackle the problem.
But questions about what the Cardinal knew, and when, persisted.
Louise Milligan pieces together decades of disturbing activities highlighting Pell’s actions and cover-ups. The book is a testament to the most intimate stories of complainants. Many people entrusted their secrets to be told here for the first time.
Multi-award winning Cardinal reveals uncomfortable truths about a culture of entitlement, abuse of trust and how ambition can silence evil.
“A heartbreaking tribute to the children abused within his circle.”
-Tom Keneally
“This book is one of the most forensic, explosive, historically detailed tomes I have ever read. MUP were brave to get it out there.”
– Derryn Hinch
“The genius of Milligan’s book is letting us hear the voices of the men and women George Pell failed in his climb to the highest reaches of the church. They speak with heartbreaking clarity of his impact on their lives. I can’t imagine this being better done.”
– David Marr
“Milligan is thoughtful, astute, fair-minded and utterly dogged. Her thoroughness both honours the victims of clergy abuse and invests their stories with an extraordinary power.”
– Annabel Crabb
“This brilliant book didn’t win a Walkley for nothing. It is evocatively written, courageously constructed and bears witness to the author’s fine words. ‘We can never let this happen again.’”
– Peter FitzSimons
Louise Milligan is an investigative reporter for the ABC TV Four Corners program. She covered the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse. Her exclusive stories for the ABC TV 7.30 program on the allegations against George Pell won her two Quill Awards from the Melbourne Press Club, including the Gold Quill for best story of the year, the highest honour in Victorian journalism. For this book, in 2017 she was awarded the Walkley Book Award and the Sir Owen Dixon Chambers Law Reporter of the Year Award. In 2018 Milligan was shortlisted for the Australian Book Industry Awards Small Publishers’ Adult Book of the Year, Highly Commended in the Non-Fiction category for the Davitt Awards and won the Civic Choice Award for the Melbourne Prize for Literature. Milligan is Irish-born and was raised a devoted Catholic.
