LGBT protestors march at George Pell’s funeral

By CHRISTINE LAI

LGBTQ+ protesters took over College and Oxford Street protesting the late Cardinal George Pell while his funeral service ran on Thursday morning.

Prior to the rally, NSW Police sought a court injunction to attempt to prevent protesters from holding a protest outside Pell’s funeral at St Mary’s Cathedral on the basis of “safety” concerns. However, police backflipped on their initial decision after negotiations between them and Community Action For Rainbow Rights (CARR) organisers found an alternative route for the rally.

While Cardinal Pell was farewelled with a Requiem Mass at St Mary’s Cathedral, protesters gathered at Hyde Park yelling chants including, “George Pell, go to Hell. Take Dutton there as well!”

CARR activist Eddie Stephenson began the protest by telling the crowd that they had gathered here to “give him the send-off that we know what he deserves”, for Pell to “rot in hell”.

“Take your vile politics, your homophobia, your sexism and your complicity in systematic abuse within the Catholic Church there as well”, she said.

A damning eulogy for Cardinal Pell

Stephenson gave a eulogy condemning Cardinal Pell for spending his “entire life, his considerable wealth, his connections, and his power in the Catholic Church to defend the powerful, the strong and the unjust, against the oppressed, against the vulnerable and against the defenceless”.

She noted several instances of Pell’s conservative politics including times where he compared homosexuality to be worse than smoking and said women “having abortions is a worse moral scandal than priests committing abuse”.

Co-Chair of First Mardi Gras Inc Ken Davis criticised Pell as “not only outrageous in terms of what he did as an abuser” but also what he did by “enabling exploitation and sexual abuse in structures of church nationally and internationally”.

Davis is one of the 78ers, a group of LGBT activists who marched in the original Sydney Mardi Gras and fought against police violence and arrests on 24 June 1978. He asserted an importance in removing government funding from religious institutions, referencing the problem of Pell’s “relationship to real structures of power”.

“The solution is not simply to oppose legislation against Religious Discrimination. It’s not simply to say people in religious schools or religious health services or youth services should not be discriminated against.

The point is to remove government funding from these services totally. These services should be in control of the community or the government and should be held accountable as public services,” Davis said.

Justice for sexual assault survivors

Sexual assault survivor Vivienne Moore called it an “important day”, describing the “incredibly difficult journey” of remembering her friends who had not survived their experiences of sexual assault.

“My queer friends who’ve killed themselves, this is murder”, Moore said. She thanked her queer family for supporting her and asked everyone to look after each other, yourselves, stating “love is what saved me, love will always win”.

UNSW Education Officer Cherish Kuehlmann  denounced Pell for defending the “crimes of the Catholic Church”. Kuehlmann spoke of the “unjust” nature of the justice system, stating that it was the “justice system that lets powerful people like Pell walk free”, the “same system responsible for killing Indigenous people in custody”.

Manning the fight against the Religious Discrimination Bill

Kuehlmann spoke about the Albanese government review into the Religious Discrimination Bill where federal attorney general, Mark Dreyfus is leading, stating “powerful religious institutions want to define the right to sack LGBTA+ staff in NSW which is currently legal”.

USyd student Simone Maddison called the service a “a funeral for the living”. Maddison refused to say the Cardinal’s name, instead speaking on the 1800 suspected abusers recorded from 1980-2015 in Australia who will “continue the Church’s legacy of neglect and violence in innocent victims.”

“This man is not a saint or a martyr. Call him what he is, a criminal”, Maddison stated.

Protesters marched down College Street and onto Oxford Street, calling out attendees of Pell’s funeral and chanting for the continued safeguard of LGBT+ rights.

Stephenson mentioned the action taken by sexual assault survivors and supporters yesterday where they tied ribbons to St Mary’s Cathedral’s fences as a form of silent protest, noting that every ribbon had been cut down overnight by the Church.

“They [Catholic Church] couldn’t stand one peaceful, simple expression of protest of what’s been going on within the church hierarchy”, she said.

Stephenson called this a “sobering reminder” for the many victims who were abused and “denied their innocence in childhood”.

“We’re out here standing out here in solidarity with survivors saying their voices are heard, and we’re going to fight against Pell, against the bigotry that says the strong should rule, and the vulnerable should be crushed down.

We’ll never get away uncontested and will be there every step of the way fighting against them,” Stephenson said.