THE attempt by 60 Minutes last Sunday to discredit Sydney Archbishop George Pell is an example of media entrapment and sensationalism at its worst.
According to Archbishop Pell, when the Channel 9 program approached him for an interview, he was told it was in relation to ‘matters arising out of the American cardinals’ meeting in Rome, the relevance of these issues to the Church in Australia’, including the commission he set up to deal with sex abuse cases in Melbourne archdiocese.
As anyone who saw the program would now realise, this was clearly a pretext for a more specific agenda.
Archbishop Pell acted quickly to set up a procedure for dealing with sex abuse in the Church when he became Archbishop of Melbourne in 1996. He has shown a willingness to face up to the problem and has done so with credit.
