the pope and the cardinal...

The pope's in town. He believes in God. He also believes that the current climate change catastrophe is caused by human activity.

Cardinal George Pell, the Archbishop of Sydney, and the pope's host in Sydney, also believes in God. But Pell is a climate change skeptic.

Now this is interesting. Think about it for a while....

Pell, without any substantive evidence for the existence of a god, can summon up a veritable mountain of unshakable faith in the existence of the non-existent. Yet, when the vast majority of climate scientists tell us that climate change is human-caused, Pell discovers The Church of Selective Skepticism...

Well, not quite...

He didn't "only just" discover Selective Skepticism. Pell is an old hand at being selectively skeptical when it suits him. And it suited him to be skeptical about the truth of Anthony Jones's allegations of sexual assault by a priest.

Which raises more questions about Pell... He hides behind the Catholic Church's Towards Healing process for dealing with complaints about sexual abuse by Catholic clergy. This process limits compensation for victims to $50,000 and effectively prevents them from going public with their complaint. And when an alleged victim does go public, the Church, and I must assume here that this means with Cardinal Pell's powerful blessing, moves into full-on litigious counter-attack mode.

Jesus wept...

Anyway, it seems that Pell and The Pope will soon become even more closely acquainted...

Welcome to Sydney, Joseph Ratzinger...