BREAKING: updated edition of Louise Milligan’s ‘Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of George Pell’ to be published with new foreword by Tom Keneally

Further details of Pell’s crimes against his victims named by Louise Milligan in the book as The Kid and the Choirboy will be detailed.

Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of George Pell by Louise Milligan
Melbourne University Press
Publication date: Thursday 28th March 2019
PAPERBACK RRP $34.99 ISBN 9780522875997
EBOOK $16.99 ISBN 9780522876000

Melbourne University Publishing will publish an updated edition of the acclaimed and explosive Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of George Pell by Louise Milligan, winner of Walkley Book of the Year, acclaimed investigative journalist and witness in Cardinal George Pell’s trial.

Further details of Pell’s crimes against his victims named by Louise Milligan in the book as The Kid and the Choirboy will be detailed. The edition will feature a new foreword by Tom Keneally who describes Cardinal as “a heartbreaking tribute to the children abused within Pell’s circle.”

Louise Milligan said, “the conviction of George Pell of five counts of sexual crimes against two boys gives new resonance to the final line in my book, something a survivor of Ballarat once said to me: ‘truth is the child of time’. No-one is celebrating this verdict, but it shows that while our legal system is at times imperfect, in this case it has delivered justice.”

Richard Tegoni, Acting CEO of MUP said, “The stories of endurance and suffering by victims now deserve to be read widely. MUP is proud to have published this landmark work that is one of the most important public interest books in MUP’s 97-year history.”

In October 2016, MUP commissioned Louise Milligan to write Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of George Pell, after she had spent more than two years reporting on the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse. The book pieces together decades of disturbing activities and cover-ups by Australia’s most powerful Catholic leader who became Vatican treasurer and adviser to Pope Francis.

Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of George Pell delivers uncomfortable truths about a culture of sexual entitlement and abuse of trust within the Catholic Church. It is a chilling case study in how ambition can silence evil.

Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of George Pell won the highest honour in Australian journalism for a book, Walkley Book of the Year (2017), the Civic Choice Award of the Melbourne Prize, and the Sir Owen Dixon Chambers Law Reporter of the Year for Louise Milligan. For her exclusive reports on allegations against Cardinal George Pell for ABC TV 7.30, Louise Milligan won two Quill awards, including Gold Quill for best story of the year, the highest honour in Victorian journalism. Louise Milligan is Irish-born and was raised a devoted Catholic.