Come home, you pompous buffoon

Tim Minchin’s wish is coming true. George Pell is coming home!

Australia’s most senior Catholic cleric, Cardinal George Pell, has been charged with historical sexual assault offences and ordered to appear in a Melbourne court.

Victoria Police Deputy Commissioner Shane Patton said the Vatican-based cardinal was required to appear at the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on July 18.

Pell has a collection of direct, personal sexual abuse allegations hanging over his head from years ago. He was an associate of Gerald Ridsdale, and while living in a house with a notorious child rapist does not make him guilty of the same, it did make him well practiced in the art of plausible denial and presenting apologetics for the church. He then acquired a reputation for platitudes and avoidance, rather than action, in dealing with the Catholic Church’s history of sexual abuse in Australia.

He’s not a nice man, but somehow he has been promoted upwards within the Catholic hierarchy. He’s in charge of the Vatican’s finances — it seems to me that being the top man in charge of papal excess and loot ought to be another crime.