You may know about Cardinal George Pell, Australia’s most senior and most prominent Catholic.  He is suspected of having covered up cases of child abuse by priests – indeed, he has been accused of being an abuser himself – and has consequently been summoned to appear before Australia’s long-running Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.  Unfortunately he is in Rome at the moment, helping to clean up the Vatican’s finances, and he is too ill to travel.

Some mean-spirited people think he’s only pretending to be ill, because that’s what most people do when they’re summoned to face serious charges in another country.  These mean-spirited people think Cardinal Pell is afraid to come back to Australia and face his accusers – and perhaps get arrested.  Me, I like to give people the benefit of the doubt.

Whatever the truth of the matter, the case has inspired Tim Minchin to write and record a song.  Tim is a musical and comical genius and the video clip is worth seeing.  He’s quite rude about Cardinal Pell, which may turn out to be unfair, but it’s so clever, funny and musical that I think a little rudeness is forgivable.

In case the name is not familiar to you, Tim Minchin wrote and performs the brilliantly satirical song ‘Storm’ and wrote the musical ‘Matilda’, currently running in London, Sydney and perhaps elsewhere.

Here’s a link to a site where you can see and hear Tim singing ‘Come Home Cardinal Pell’, ‘Storm’ and other songs.