Sydney Dark:

Grant Gallicho over at Dotcommonweal has a hair-raising story about the Archdiocese of Sydney, Australia, which can be found here

Here’s a preview:

"Australia’s ABC TV seems to have caught Cardinal George Pell of Sydney in a rather serious error. In a letter dated February 14, 2003, Pell wrote to abuse victim Anthony Jones to dismiss the allegation because, Pell claimed, he had received no other complaints against the accused priest, Fr. Terence Goodall, and Goodall denied any wrongdoing. Yet on the same day Pell wrote to another victim to verify his complaint against Goodall. In fact, just three weeks before Pell wrote the letters, he received a report from Howard Murray, the chancery’s internal investigator, urging him to accept the victims’ allegations."

Sydney Bright:

On a happier (definitely) note, MyCatholicVoice.com has inaugurated a cool new "Virtual Pilgrimage" site for World Youth Day here.  In an email to us (slightly edited, as we say for clarity and content) the founder, Fred Fosnacht, explained it this way:

"We are sponsoring an online event for World Youth Day, a Virtual Pilgrimage. This group is intended to bring the vitality and catechesis of this event to a broader audience than is able to physically attend the event in Syndey.  You may have heard that we have trained about two dozen ’youth reporters.’  They will be creating videos, blogging, and in general doing ’behind the scenes’ reporting and documenting their personal  pilgrimage.   In addition to that, we will also be creating ’Ministry Minutes,’ short out-takes of the WYD catechesis in a ’new media’ format on MyCatholicVoice."

James Martin, SJ