Australian Politician Appeals to Church to Respond to Abuse Allegations (File)

Cardinal George Pell was summoned to appear in Melbourne Magistrates’ Court after Victoria Police charged him with multiple “historical” sex offences, including child sex offences, on June 29.

Storyful has provided file footage of Labor politician Clare O’Neil, who on March 3, 2016, appealed to the Catholic church in Parliament, days after Pell appeared on videolink as part of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

“What is so upsetting about what we are hearing in the royal commission is not just the acts, not just what was done and what was not done but the almost total lack of empathy that is being shown by some church leaders to the survivors, to the people whose lives, in some senses, have been destroyed by things that happened to them while the Catholic church was meant to be their protector. I cannot fathom, watching these testimonies, why church leaders cannot just stand up and say that they are sorry, just acknowledge that incredible pain occurred and that young people were not protected in the way they deserved to be and say that they screwed up, that there are things that can be done to make this better and that we should all work together to do them. But that is not what we have heard, and it is has been incredibly disappointing to see,” she said. Credit: Australian Parliament