Trigger warning: sexual abuse, sexual assault, child abuse.
Catholic reaction to the conviction of George Pell for child sexual abuse was as diverse as the Catholic community itself. Some of the reaction has a public voice, including the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, the Catholic commentariat, individual bishops, leaders of Catholic agencies and education authorities, and prominent Catholic survivors.
This aspect of Catholic reaction can be identified. Some explored the trial, conviction and forthcoming appeal, while the remainder discussed the likely impact on the Catholic community, sometimes a gut reaction of a personal kind. Some emphasised the value of the Church's works in the community while others gave reassurance that the Church is now a safe environment. Some questioned the verdict or urged against a rush to judgement before the completion of the appeal process.
Survivors, including John Ellis, Chrissie Foster and Peter Gogarty, expressed satisfaction that justice had been done in this case and that despite such a high-profile suspect, the jury believed the victim and therefore the justice system had triumphed.
The reaction of regular church-going Catholics and the broader Catholic community is harder to capture. Anger and outrage at betrayal, even grief and trauma, was frequent. What they seemed to have in common was devastation for the church and guilt by association by being branded a Catholic in a hurtful way.
This association may be extended to the tens of thousands of non-Catholic parents and students in Catholic schools and the many thousands of non-Catholic staff of Catholic agencies, including hospitals, welfare services, aged care and international aid and development.
The enormous scale of the uproar and impact flowing from Pell's conviction was something new for Catholics even after a decade of revelations of widespread clerical criminality, including those revealed by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Pell has been such a towering figure, representing the face of Catholicism not just within the church but to the wider community.
A conservative within a conservative church he was a divisive internal figure, not just because of his strictly orthodox views but because of the unbending and assertive style with which he promulgated them. This appealed to some Catholics but mightily offended others. In dealing with survivors of child sexual abuse he projected a lack of empathy and, while Archbishop in Sydney, oversaw the case that led to the establishment of the Ellis defence, which made it easier for the Catholic Church to