Vatican enemies circling Cardinal George Pell as he prepares to give evidence to royal commission into child sexual abuse

CARDINAL George Pell is in danger. He has not just walked into a security nightmare at the Rome hotel where he is giving evidence, writes Andrew Bolt.

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA - JULY 08: The Archbishop Of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell addresses the media during a press conference ahead of World Youth Day Sydney 08, at the Polding Centre on July 8, 2008 in Sydney, Australia. Organised every two to three years by the Catholic Church, World Youth Day (WYD) is an invitation from the Pope to the youth of the world to celebrate their faith. The celebration, being held in Sydney from July 15, 2008 to July 20, 2008, will mark the first visit of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI to Australia. (Photo by Brendon Thorne/Getty Images)

CARDINAL George Pell is in danger. He will not just walk tomorrow into a security nightmare at the Rome hotel where he will give evidence.

He will also know that powerful enemies in the Catholic Church want him to fall, so they can force him out before he concludes financial reforms that have uncovered serious corruption.

Pell will tomorrow give evidence for the third time to the royal commission into child sexual abuse in institutions, but must do it by video from Rome after the commission accepted medical evidence that his heart problems made it too dangerous for him to fly home.

>> TAP HERE FOR LIVE COVERAGE OF PELL’S TESTIMONY FROM ROME

The commission has organised for Pell to give his evidence from a conference room at the four star Hotel Qurinale on the busy Via Nationale. The room is entered off the streets on both sides through short passages, and hundreds of seats have been set in front of where Pell will speak to allow victims, activists, media and priests to watch.

Many of those Australian victims and activists have checked into the hotel next door and hardly look threatening, with their multicoloured ribbons.

Yet Vatican security officials are on high alert in a city already so nervous of terrorism attacks that an armoured car and heavily armed soldiers guard a square just a couple of hundred metres up the road from the Qurinale.

Those officials have met Italian police and Australian security experts to work out protection for Pell, the third most senior Vatican official, now that he is also the target of a frenzied campaign of vilification.

Pell has been accused of covering up paedophilia, even though no proof has yet been given in either a Victorian parliamentary inquiry or the royal commission.

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Victorian police also falsely accused Pell’s compensation scheme of swearing victims to silence, and last week it emerged that Pell himself was being investigated for abusing between five and 10 boys — vague and unverified claims he furiously denies.

The Hotel Quirinale in Rome where Cardinal Pell will give evidence.

Media outlets have meanwhile repeatedly played a Tim Minchin song calling Pell a “coward” and “scum”, and Pell’s team fears the mood in that Rome hotel room could be very volatile. But they also fear how the media will react if Italian police go overboard and protect Pell with drawn guns.

Then there is the physical ordeal. Pell is 74 and not well. His blood pressure has fluctuated alarmingingly in the past week, but he must spend the next three or four days giving evidence from 10pm to 2am, Rome time. He has spent the past week preparing by changing his working week to work later.

The actual line of questioning could be an anticlimax, likely to involve what he knew as an auxiliary bishop in Melbourne when his then boss and rival, Archbishop Frank Little, was moving around paedophile priests and destroying their files. Pell has repeatedly said Little kept this from him.

But his enemies are circling, especially in the Vatican, which Pell is in charge of church finances and is driving a reform of how they are controlled. Pell and his team, including several Australians, have found evidence of suspected corruption and criminality involving figures very high in the Church.

But Pell turns 75 this year and must offer the Pope his resignation under the church’s rules, and the Pope may be urged by some colleagues to accept it. These allegations against Pell will be a convenient excuse.

So much is at stake when Pell walks into the Quirinale — for victims, for Pell and for the future of his church.

>> TAP HERE FOR LIVE COVERAGE OF PELL’S TESTIMONY FROM ROME