MUP to publish biography of George Pell

From ABC journalist Louise Milligan

Melbourne University Press is proud to announce the forthcoming publication of Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of George Pell by ABC journalist Louise Milligan.

The book is the culmination of two years research and inquiry into Australia’s most prominent Catholic and the former Archbishop of Sydney – George Pell.

Louise Milligan is an investigative reporter for ABC TV's 7.30 and Four Corners, who has been covering the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse for the past three years. She is the only Australian journalist who has been privy to the most intimate stories of complainants concerning Pell and has pieced together a series of disturbing pictures of the Cardinal's knowledge and his actions, many of which will be told for the first time in the pages of Cardinal.

“

Cardinal uncovers uncomfortable truths about a culture of sexual entitlement, abuse of trust and how ambition can silence evil.”

George Pell is the most recognisable face of the Australian Catholic Church. He was the Ballarat boy with the film-star looks who studied at Oxford and rose through the ranks to become the Vatican's indispensable 'Treasurer'. As an outspoken defender of church orthodoxy, Pell’s ascendancy within the clergy was remarkable and seemingly unstoppable.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse has brought to light horrific stories about sexual abuse of the most vulnerable and provoked public anger at the extent of the cover-up. George Pell has always portrayed himself as the first man in the Church to tackle the problem. But questions about what the Cardinal knew, and when, have persisted.

The nation's most prominent Catholic is now the subject of a police investigation into allegations spanning decades that he too abused children.

Conspiracy or cover-up? Cardinal uncovers uncomfortable truths about a culture of sexual entitlement, abuse of trust and how ambition can silence evil.