In November, the Victorian parliamentary committee reported. Welcoming the report, Pell admitted past mistakes by the Melbourne archdiocese during his time as auxiliary bishop there. Signalling a change of approach, he wrote: ''The report details some of the serious failures in the way the church dealt with these crimes and responded to victims, especially before the procedural reforms of the mid 1990s. Irreparable damage has been caused. By the standards of common decency and by today's standards, church authorities were not only slow to deal with the abuse but sometimes did not deal with it in any appropriate way at all. This is indefensible.''

It is only part of the story to lay blame at the feet of deceased church leaders such as Little. The opaque hierarchical structure of the Catholic Church leaves many Australian citizens wondering about the clerical culture inside the church and its lack of transparency and accountability. While in Melbourne, Pell was able to say that, as an auxiliary bishop, he was not responsible for the supervision of erring priests. In Sydney, when he became archbishop, he had to deal with the Ellis litigation, where the court found that an archbishop and his auxiliary bishops were responsible for appointments and supervision. The differing role of auxiliary bishops in different dioceses will need to be clarified before the commission.

In Sydney, Pell brought in Corrs, his favoured lawyers from Melbourne, as his primary legal advisers. They ran the Ellis litigation very hard. Monsignor John Usher, chancellor of the archdiocese of Sydney, wrote to John Ellis on August 6, 2009, stating that he was distressed to learn that the archdiocesan lawyers had never responded to an offer of compromise and that the cardinal ''will do all in his power to ensure that this sort of legal abuse is never repeated again''.

Major firms briefing senior counsel in the appeal courts incurring six-figure expenses are careful to act on instructions from their clients. The commission will want to establish who in Pell's office was responsible for authorising or failing to arrest the legal abuse.

In preparation for his pending appearance, Pell made a second and more specific admission of the need for a change of approach. He wrote: ''Whatever position was taken by the lawyers during the litigation, or by lawyers or individuals within the archdiocese following the litigation, my own view is that the church in Australia should be able to be sued in cases of this kind.''