“[Jesus] said to his disciples, ‘Let the little children come to me. Don’t keep them away. God’s kingdom belongs to people like them.'” — the Bible, Mark 10:13-16.

“What is important for the press and the public to realise is that because there is a persistent press campaign against the Catholic Church’s adequacies and inadequacies in this area, that does not necessarily represent the percentage of the problem that we offer … We object to [the extent of misdoing] being exaggerated, we object to being described as the only cab on the rank.” — Cardinal George Pell, November 2012.

In a few hours’ time, Pell, Australia’s most senior Catholic, will face a Victorian parliamentary enquiry into child s-x abuse.

The Catholic Church has admitted at least 620 children were abused by its clergy in Victoria in the last 80 years. Survivors of this abuse would like to hear some answers. The culture of cover-up, denial and letting children suffer to preserve the reputation of the Church must end definitively.

Everyone has a right to subscribe to the religion of their choosing. No one has the right to abuse children, and no one has the right to sweep that abuse under the carpet — not you, not us, not the Pope in Rome. Certainly not Pell.

Pell has the opportunity today to chart a fresh direction for the Catholic Church, and to give hope to survivors of s-x abuse. A genuine apology, genuine contrition, and a heartfelt rejection of that shameful period of denial is long overdue. If God’s Kingdom does indeed belong to the children, as Jesus said, isn’t an apology the least Pell could do to atone for the past wrongs they have suffered?