The cardinal won’t be coming. It’s his heart. A fresh medical report from Rome says it would be “difficult” for Cardinal George Pell to take the long flight home to give further evidence to the royal commission into the institutional responses to child sexual abuse.

“It doesn’t preclude his travel,” observed the commissioner Peter McClellan. “It doesn’t say he can’t come.” But McClellan has accepted the verdict of Pell’s medicos that a journey home at this time might have “serious consequences” for His Eminence’s health.

It’s an unhappy outcome all round. McClellan wants him to give evidence in person. Abuse victims are keen to confront the man in the flesh. And the cardinal, it seems, may never walk the streets of his native Ballarat again.

Just how sick he is remains a mystery. Pell is keen to keep the finer details of his heart problems secret.

His counsel, Alan Myers QC, argued against releasing the medical reports in full: “All it would do is provoke some sort of debate in the press about the medical condition of Cardinal Pell. There is no public interest in that.”

Under strict secrecy, McClellan allowed four barristers to read the latest report. Unimpressed was Paul O’Dwyer SC who told the commission the two-page document revealed “common or garden problems in a man of the cardinal’s age”.



O’Dwyer represents the school principal Graeme Sleeman who lost his job after trying to get rid of a deranged paedophile, Fr Peter Searson. The Searson case is a problem for Pell: he investigated the priest and left him in his Melbourne parish.



Sleeman never worked in the Catholic school system again.



O’Dwyer observed that the difficulties facing Pell “fade into insignificance” compared with the pain and distress of victims giving evidence to the commission.



But none of the barristers – some in Sydney and some gathered in Melbourne – challenged the medical report outright. One or two remarked that they were not cardiologists and had no access to cardiologists to contest its conclusions.



Barristers and the commission threw around possible solutions: could the cardinal come by short stages? What about oxygen on the flight? Could he, wondered the commissioner, come by sea?



But time is on Pell’s side. “There is a need,” said McClellan, “to bring the matter to an end as soon as we can conveniently do so.”



He is going to consider his position over the weekend but the commissioner clearly signalled that Pell will be allowed to give evidence by video link from Rome beginning on 29 February.



He is expected to be in the box for about four days: three days’ questioning by counsel assisting the commission, Gail Furness SC, and another day’s questioning by the barristers representing victims.



McClellan also foreshadowed he will release some, at least, of the cardinal’s medical report on Monday. The public, he said, had a right to know why Pell would not be present in the flesh. His counsel agreed. He told the commission his client was anxious “to avoid the appearance of unwillingness to give evidence”.

