Sunday Sermon - Priest's Profits

In 2011, Cardinal Pell was instrumental in the Australian Catholic Church using money, mostly from the Sydney archdiocese, to spend $30 million – though one estimate goes as high as $85 million – to buy Domus Australia, an old Marist Fathers home in Rome's Via Cernaia that has been converted into a guest house, with a 150-seat auditorium, and includes a private apartment for Cardinal Pell.

"It's the cost of a high school, perhaps a high school and a church," the Cardinal conceded, before noting: "We haven't given the money away. It's an investment."

The vice-president of the Rationalists Association of NSW, Max Wallace, raises a fair question: "How is it that the maximum payout of victims of sexual abuse can hope to achieve through Cardinal Pell's Towards Healing process is $75,000 yet the church can find as much as $30 million to acquire a property in Rome? This surely tells victims that the church really doesn't care about them, and the church's mea culpas in the light of all the revelations about abuse are hollow and insincere."

An isolated example?

Bishop Franz Peter Tebartz-van Elst was formally suspended amid accusations that he had spent over €31m (£26.5m) on renovating his official residence in Limburg, Germany,  that included a €15,000 bathtub, furnishings worth €380,000 and a garden that came with a €783,000 bill. The extravagence earned the 53-year-old bishop his nickname - the Bishop of Bling