Cardinal George Pell found guilty of child sex abuse
If this sounds familiar, it is because I posted this news in December when it actually happened.
Cardinal George Pell has been found guilty and is set to be jailed for child sexual abuse in the most sensational verdict since the Catholic Church became engulfed in worldwide abuse scandals.
Australian media has been unable to report the guilty verdict until now, due to a suppression order.
A second trial, over allegations Pell abused boys in a swimming pool in Ballarat in the 1970s, has now been abandoned due to lack of admissible evidence and the suppression order lifted.
I'm not sure why the timing is as such, but it was unfortunate that it was not made public before the Vatican Summit.
The cardinal was Archbishop of Melbourne when he abused the two 13-year-old boys and was managing the church’s response to widespread child abuse by priests through the “Melbourne Response”, which he designed.
Pretty cool, huh? Like the fox designing the henhouse.
He was found guilty in a retrial last December, with the verdict sending shockwaves through the Vatican and around the world. A jury in an earlier trial was discharged, in September, when it was unable to reach a verdict. His legal team will appeal against the conviction.
ABC News
Even after he was convicted of child sex offences in December, the private nature of the hearings granted him a clear path. But on Tuesday, he got a taste of the outrage and disgust reverberating around the world as he made that walk as a convicted paedophile.
"You're an absolute pig. Burn in hell," a heckler yelled at Pell, as police pushed through a media scrum.
Reaction to the decision rippled out from the courtroom, spanning from the highest office in the land to the everyday Catholic left to grapple with their faith.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he was "deeply shocked at the crimes".
"It is the victims and their families I am thinking of today, and all who have suffered from sexual abuse by those they should have been able to trust, but couldn't," he said. "Their prolonged pain and suffering will not have ended today."
PHOTO: The boys were abused at St Patrick's Cathedral in Melbourne in the 1990s.
(ABC News: Danielle Bonica)
ictorian Premier Daniel Andrews said "good people of faith" had "been betrayed".
His sentiments were confirmed by comments from Catholics on talkback radio in Melbourne.
"I grew up in very strict Catholic family, but I have no faith whatsoever," a woman from country Victoria told ABC Radio Melbourne.
"They've let us all down, and they're still letting us all down."
'That institution is doomed'
Some of Pell's first years as a priest were spent giving sermons at the parish of St Alipius in Ballarat, and he spent a decade as the director of the Aquinas College for Catholic education.
The current parish priest, Father Peter Sherman, said he first heard the nature of Pell's offences this morning. "I think people will be very sad. I don't think there's any winners in the sexual abuse issue," he said. "People will scratch their heads about this — I will."
Francis Sullivan, who was once in charge of coordinating the Catholic Church's actions after the child abuse royal commission, said the church had been "brought to its knees".
"It's really hard for a lot of Catholics," the former chief executive of the Truth, Justice and Healing Council said. "As a Catholic myself, I think, God, has it come to this?
"When you have a cardinal being convicted, it's more than a person being convicted in a way — it's like our whole approach to life has been put through the wringer."
'Untenable' associations
The church is not the only institution left to wonder about its relationship with Australia's highest-ranking Catholic.
At his old school in Ballarat, Pell's name has literally been scratched off the windows of a building, housing the music and art rooms, which was named in his honour.
Pell attended the prestigious St Patrick's College in Ballarat from 1949 to 1959, and had since been inducted as a legend of the school — an honour that has also now been stripped.
"We believe that it's untenable and not appropriate to have our students walk through a building that carries Cardinal Pell's name when the jury has found that he is guilty of offences relating to child sexual abuse," college headmaster John Crowley said.
The headmaster came under fire in 2015 when he gave Pell a private tour of the school as calls mounted for the prelate to answer questions for the royal commission.
At the time, he said: "It was a great thrill to be able to escort His Eminence around the college grounds and witness the way he interacted with staff and students alike".
A statement from the school on Tuesday said it "reserves the right to revisit" the stripping of Pell's school honours if he successfully appeals the ruling.
College's 'deep remorse'
Mr Crowley said it was not an easy decision to scrub his name from the school's honour lists.
"[But] it's a commitment that we have made to our current families, and boys in our care that we will role model behaviours which aspire to the highest possible standards," he said.
The college will also put a line through Pell's name on a board listing the school's ordained alumni, something it has done with five other clergymen, including convicted abuser Gerald Ridsdale.
According to the college's website, the strikethroughs "stand both as a symbol for the bravery of victims and survivors of child sexual abuse and their families, and for the college's deep remorse for the pain and suffering caused by the actions of these individuals".
Even in the sporting sphere, the decision is having ramifications.
The Richmond AFL club removed Pell as a vice-patron, tweeting the club had "formed a view that his association is no longer tenable or appropriate".
Vatican awaits the 'course of justice'
The Vatican's first response to the conviction came late on Tuesday night. Acting Holy See spokesman Alessandro Gisotti read a statement to reporters at the Vatican, but did not take questions.
"This is painful news that, as we are well aware, has shocked many people, not only in Australia," he said.
"We await the outcome of the appeals process, recalling that Cardinal Pell maintains his innocence and has the right to defend himself until the last stage of appeal.
"In order to ensure the course of justice, the Holy Father has confirmed the precautionary measures which had been imposed by the local ordinary on Cardinal George Pell when he returned to Australia.
"That is, while awaiting the definitive assessment of the facts, as is the norm, Cardinal Pell is prohibited from exercising public ministry and from having any voluntary contact whatsoever with minors."
He added that no additional measures would be taken against Pell until appeal proceedings were over.
Recently, Pope Francis told a summit on the issue of abuse in the church that clergy who preyed on children were the "tools of Satan".
The president of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, Archbishop Mark Coleridge, said bishops were "shocked" by the guilty verdict.
"The same legal system that delivered the verdict will consider the appeal that the Cardinal's legal team has lodged. Our hope, at all times, is that through this process, justice will be served," he said in a statement.
"In the meantime, we pray for all those who have been abused and their loved ones, and we commit ourselves anew to doing everything possible to ensure that the Church is a safe place for all, especially the young and the vulnerable."
Pell will return to court for a pre-sentencing hearing on Wednesday.
Pope Francis demanded ‘concrete’ measures
against child sex abuse. Where are they?
Pope Francis celebrates Mass at the Vatican on Sunday, concluding a summit on clerical sex abuse.
(Giuseppe Lami/AP)
By Editorial Board WAPO
WAS THE Vatican’s just-completed summit on child sex abuse, convened by Pope Francis amid a crisis of credibility that has crippled the Catholic Church’s moral authority, really intended simply to prepare the way for genuine reforms in the indefinite future?
Apparently so!
Victims’ groups had hoped for much more, as had many of the faithful in the United States and elsewhere. They were heartened, briefly, when the pope opened the unprecedented four-day conference by demanding what he called “concrete” measures to deliver something real that would uproot the scourge of clerical sex abuse and hierarchical coverup.
In the end, those concrete measures were a chimera — widely debated, held up to intense canonical scrutiny, but ultimately put off to some future date. The contrast with the pope’s own words could not have been sharper, or more disappointing.
Child sex abuse, the pope declared in his various remarks, is akin to human sacrifice, and the “wrath of God” should be visited upon the “ravenous wolves” who commit it. He called for an “all-out battle.”
His rhetoric suggested a no-holds-barred approach; so did his earlier pledges to apply a “zero-tolerance” policy, meaning, at the least, that any priest credibly accused of assaulting a minor would be removed from ministry.
Yet at the conclusion of four wrenching days in Rome — days when nearly 200 bishops and cardinals heard unstinting testimony and criticism by victims and their advocates — the result was dismayingly vague. What had been held up as a policymaking conference resembled more closely an encounter group, in which awareness was raised, sensitivity enhanced and heartfelt emotions expressed.
That’s not good enough — not for the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics, nor for the 70 million in the United States. For the U.S. bishops, the shortcomings in Rome should serve as a gauntlet thrown down. They must act in coming months.
A meaningful and, yes, concrete agenda for the U.S. bishops would start with taking up measures they were on the verge of adopting last November when the Holy See intervened to stop them. That would include establishing a code of conduct for bishops, who have been instrumental in covering up the church’s crimes, as well as a commission of lay Catholics to review allegations of misconduct by bishops. In addition, it would mean reversing the church’s steadfast opposition to changes in state laws that prohibit survivors of pedophile priests from filing lawsuits years after the abuse took place. Moreover, it would mean a shift in rhetoric that would recognize not only the church’s obligation to root out abuse but also its unique history as a haven for abusers.
Let the American bishops act if the pope will not.
The real issue at the summit should have been getting the church right with God, which it so very clearly is not! Yet there was little in the way of confession of sins, nothing but empty promises in the way of repentance, not even the recognition that they have sinned spectacularly against God and man, and certainly no acceptance of responsibility - it was all the Devil's fault. Shades of Flip Wilson there.
The Catholic Church still seem to think that they have a moral authority, though somewhat tainted by evil people. But I don't believe the Catholic Church has had anything remotely resembling a moral authority in at least a thousand years.
Revelation 17 is waiting.
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