The Chaser Report - We Crashed George Pell's Funeral

Episode Date: February 2, 2023

Bury your sorrows with our limited edition Straight-To-Pell shirt here! Charles returns to the podcast to pay due respect to the late Cardinal Pell. Daily Chaser Report will be back on Monday. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gadigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome back to The Chaser Report for 2023. Oh, well done, almost left up there. Yeah, 2020. We're here. I'm Charles Firth, and with me today is Lachlan Hodson. Hello, hello, hello, yes. But not Dom at the moment, unfortunately. He'll be back in the next episode that we record. We're doing a very important recording right now, though, where we're trying to get something out quickly.

So it's Charles and I very intimately under the covers in his child's bedroom, I believe. And that'll be a lot funnier in context when you think about what we just did today, Charles. That's right. Because the reason why we're getting this podcast out is just hours ago, literally about an hour ago. We were at St Mary's Cathedral A special little cathedral Because at the moment They're holding a big event

For who is it Someone died Since we last recorded a podcast Some pitiful from memory What was his name? It was that really It had a really funny name Because when he died everyone went

Oh hell His name rhymes with hell Yeah Oh George Pell Oh cool I had forgotten Yes The thing is, we went along to Samaria's Cathedral, and where do we start?

Where do we start? Well, basically, there was a whole lot of talk as soon as Pell died about what they're going to do for a funeral. We had Dan Andrews get asked if they were going to throw a state funeral, to which he said. No fucking way. No, yeah, absolutely. A pretty, pretty solid no there from him. But the Catholic Church and St. Mary's still wanted to do something to pay the respect that they thought. that Mr. Pell deserved.

And we heard about this, and for ages, we went, oh, so they're going to do a massive funeral. We had a similar thought, wasn't it? Because we decided we wanted to pay our lack of respect. Yes, we wanted to pay the respect that was exactly deserved. Yeah, that's right, exactly, yes. So, yeah, because this was about a week ago, wasn't it? Where Cam, you and me was sitting around having beers at the pub and going,

how do we pay our lack of respect? Well, we thought of a few big things. At first we thought of, because they're live streamed. Live streamed the entire funeral on the Thursday. Big opportunity. And we thought, well, obviously, you just get up and you start singing, Come home, Cardinal Pell. I know, you know, Tim mentioned does it better.

We thought, oh, well, you know, they need some music at the service. Yeah, yeah. There would be a breach of IP law. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the main problem. Not that the Catholic Church actually cares about breaching law. especially inside some areas cathedral.

No. But then, and then, yeah, eventually we sort of went, well, there must be a lot of evidence that's being buried

alongside George Pell, isn't it? I mean, you know, just for listeners who may not know the full history of Cardinal Pell is,

he rose up through the church because he, when he was just a bishop, I think, the Archbishop of Sydney, or even maybe before that, like in the 1990s, as he was a young gun

trying to make his name in the Catholic Church. The way he did it was he came up with the Melbourne response to the allegations of child sexual abuse within the church. The Melbourne response was essentially to get the victims to blame themselves, like to blame the victims for, I don't know, showing a bit too much ankle, whatever, you know, they could come up with at the time, making them feel a bit of guilt. Making sure that you get a good dose of Catholic guilt into you.

And then getting them to sign their... And then saying, look, Because this is the NDAs? Yeah, we'll get them to sign a whole lot of non-disclosure agreements so that, you know, and we'll pay you off with a little bit of money, but basically the trauma that we've inflicted that has ruined your entire lives is on you. We'll never see the light of day again.

And you made to feel like it's entirely your fault. Yeah. And it worked, didn't it? I mean, it worked for a while. It was a very effective thing. And the Catholic Church rewarded him handsomely. Like, he rose up through the. church, became a sort of, well, eventually became a cardinal.

Is that, yep, still on. Rose up to church, came a cardinal. Got, you know, tapped on the shoulder to go to the Vatican. It basically became the third highest person in the entire Catholic Church. And the highest person that Australia has ever produced by a long shot. And then the highest person who ever got convicted of child sex crimes in the Catholic Church. So, you know, some real heights. It's quite an impressive resume

And we thought Well, if this guy's gone and, you know, died Yes He's going to want to be buried With the thing that matters most to him Yeah, and look, the key The key to remember is when someone dies Defamation Law dies with them

Yeah, oh, that's true! Yeah, so So we can say whatever we want to do. Yeah, because I don't know whether you remember But a couple of years ago when he got convicted of pedophilia This is before it got overturned by the high court. No, I remember.

we went along to St. Mary's Cathedral and we'd noticed on because they, just outside St Mary's, they've got all the plaques of all their archbishops and cardinals from over the years and we noted that actually the one under George Pell hadn't been updated

to reflect that he was a convicted pedophile. It didn't have his most crowning achievement. Yes, that's right, his most notable achievements, surely. And so we got a little gold plaque, and we put it up there. Yeah. And then very mysteriously, the next morning, it was completely gone. Well, yeah, because their response was, yeah, to just cover it up. Well, to just get rid of the evidence, right?

But then they said that you guys never did the study. That's right. That's right. And then when I asked for comment, they went, oh, no, no. They never happened. The chaser made it up. They literally tried to gaslight us. So we went back with super glue.

Because I think we'd just use some sort of, I don't know, clay-glut. Yeah, I was a blue-tac. It was blue-tac. And then, so the next time we went with super glue. And again, it just magically, I mean, they're very good at getting rid of the evidence. Divine intervention. So George Pell's got this history, and we've got a history of doing stunts specifically about him. We thought this is our last farewell.

Yes. We've got to send him off in the only way that we really could respect him properly. So, should we just tell them? Yeah, yeah. So what we did is we got all the evidence. We gathered up, we went around, got all the evidence we could find. Well, let's pray that there's all the evidence. And put it into a big casket because we thought, well, it's Pell's funeral.

Because we had to flip into a coffin. Yes, exactly. It's Pell's funeral. Why don't we just turn up with a casket? They'll just assume that, you know, they'll put that in the ground as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, though. Oh, you're at the funeral. Oh, you've got a casket.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, come on in. Right next to the other one. Yeah, yeah. And unfortunately, I think part of the problem with how we did it was, unfortunately, the evidence was so huge that it actually spilled out. Yeah. Oh, there was paper falling out over it. And it was incredibly heavy, too.

Oh, yes. We had to lug this thing all the way. All the across. And then when we got stopped at the door. We got stopped at the door of St. Mary's Cathedral. They wouldn't let us in. We're just trying to help them out. Yeah, we're just trying to bury the evidence.

We just want to bury the evidence. That's what Pell would have wanted. It's exactly. Yes. And these guys, they thought, oh, it's another protest. We're not, we're just trying to help out. We're just helping, yeah, exactly. And the thing is, so I said to them, like, but it was like security.

And it's like, can you go and get somebody from the Catholic Church? Yeah. Like, come on. They'll understand. Like, you know, especially someone high up. Yeah. They'll know all about burying the evidence before. Yes.

That's what they're. all about. It's basically you know, their brand is to bury the evidence. So, but no, they they just, they didn't want it. They didn't want it. So it was really unfortunate and when we thought they didn't want

it, we decided. Well, no, you say that, you say it's your idea. We can say it in unison if we want, Charles. No, it's a great idea. We said to them, three, two, one. Yeah. We'll move to another parish. That's how they do it. Yeah.

The Chaser Report Less news Less often What was quite interesting about this whole stunt though Was all of the prep the day before So we did our classic stunt stuff Where we turned up on the day And how to look around her

To Recky the actual steps That we were going to try and walk up But the day beforehand Was Cam and I Cam our absolutely incredible editor Trying to get our hands on a coffin. Yes.

It's incredibly difficult to get your hands on a one-use coffin. Yeah, because what you, I mean, we want to cheat prop. No, no, no.

So you don't want to, you want to get a second-hand one. You don't want to get a second-hand one. You don't know. Yeah, I thought, well, there's a whole bunch of all these boomers

who are hoarding them. Yes. So Camer and naturally, we, our first option was we thought we'd check out a funeral. So we were kind of knocked on a couple doors. Oh,

really? Yeah, because we need to get a funeral. We need to get a massive casket. And we went, hey, if you guys got anything lying up the back, a spare one. We thought we'd cheat. You know, if you got a kid's one, we'll use that. Yes, it'll be smaller. Yes, lighter.

And they just didn't want to give us a casket. So we tried three different places before it. Then we thought, oh, you know who actually would have a ton, actual churches. Yes. So we thought we'd check out a couple of those to ask if, you know, same thing. just spare a coffin for us, please. And there was this gorgeous old woman who was just like, oh, look, guy, what's it for?

And we went, oh, is this, what kind of church is this? And she went, it's an Anglican. And we went, okay, yeah, no, it's to make fun of Pell's thing. She was totally for it. She went, yeah, no, I'd love to. I'll go check out the back. Yep. And they had none.

They had no coffins have a bag. None for us. So, Cam and I had to DIY a couple. He said, what was it made of? Because it was quite a good prop. It was incredible prop. It was made of what all good props are made of, cardboard contact paper and sticky tape.

We actually, what was almost as hard. We spent two hours, wasn't it? We spent one hour trying to get an actual coffin and went, well, this is dumb, let's make one. And then we spent six hours trying to find the right amount of cardboard for it. Because it was like, we went to a whole bunch of the industrial precinct where they are crushing boxes by the metric ton and we thought well can we have any of them and everyone's like no no we're using it people really get haughty about boxes but then we went

into an office works and just walked into the back room and took one I was fine yeah but no it turns out making a coffin quite difficult yes well that's why not as difficult as getting all of the evidence, yes. So how did you get all the evidence? Well, it was really difficult at first because... Well, I suppose there was the Royal Commission. There was the Royal Commission, yeah. But I just went online, and I found all these, like, horribly quite gruesome documents

regarding all sorts of topics about abusive children. But then that was just on the Balenciaga advertising. I think what we do is we chuck out the evidence. Yeah. And we just turn it in. We'll probably... Because that's, that coffin, it's quite large. Oh, yeah, so we should use, we'll get rid of the evidence.

Yeah, and we'll keep the coffin for something. Yeah, and well, I think we can probably, we live in Sydney. Like, this is probably, that's probably worth $340 per week. We rented it out to some 10-Zs. Oh, you're saying that we should use the coffin to rent out. How much did you say? 340 a week. I reckon you could double that.

Okay. but yeah one other thing that we should say while we're here is a huge thanks to our audience for actually giving us

a little of this idea because of course one of the big changes that we've made on the way that the Chaser works at the moment is you've now got to

subscribe to I'm not in the editing team what are we doing on the website on the website the way it works is to actually see any of our content

you've got to register you don't actually have to pay no okay I don't know whether it says that but if you register you can see all the content but the whole idea is

let's not just try and chase social media anymore let's actually make the Chaser website the place to actually go and so if you want Chaser headlines if you want Chaser stunts and sketches chaser.com.com.au is where you need to go for that now but then also we are

we're sort of hanging out more on Reddit so this stunt actually came from a Reddit user. It was Fubar Fubar boy. Fubar boy. Thank you. Fubar boy.

A devoted listener to the podcast, Fubar boy. And he suggested, well he said we want to you should give Pell a bit of a send off. And so that was how we

sort of came up with the idea. Oh, on the shirt. Oh, and the shirt. But the main thing is yeah, we've got a shirt to commemorate this, well, this historic event.

Yeah, yeah. If you two want to pay your lack of respect to the highest ranked pedophile in the Catholic Church. And I think some of the proceeds go to some charity. Yeah, we're chucking

five bucks from each church to charity. Right, and it's at chaseroshop.com. Chaseershop.com. I think it's called, it's something like send him to Pell is the name of the shirt. We're not above a good rhyme. A great pun.

But yeah, buy the shirt and subscribe. to chase.com.com.com.com. Look out for more stunts. Yes. And we'll be back from next Monday. Yep. Yep. We're coming back and we're coming back refreshed and, yeah, with a whole new strategy. How hot was it doing the stunt today? It was what was terrible heat. It was as hot as hell.