George Pell to walk free after High Court overturns conviction
In a monumentous turn of events George Pell, Australia's most senior Catholic cleric, will walk free from jail after the High Court overturned his conviction for child sex offences.
A summary released by the court summarized the judges' findings as follows: "the jury, acting rationally on the whole of the evidence, ought to have entertained a doubt as to the applicant's guilt with respect to each of the offences for which he was convicted, and ordered that the convictions be quashed and that verdicts of acquittal be entered in their place."
My colleague Chip Le Grand, who has been following today's proceedings, writes "Cardinal George Pell will be freed from jail after the High Court overturned his conviction for historic child sex offences.
11 comments:
TBTG!
God Bless Cardinal Pell. I wonder how Pope Francis will handle this? I hope he rejoices publicly. I know most leftists in the Church will be decimated. Deo Gratias! The one that should be in the slammer is former cardinal, McCarrick, but he's a liberal so he gets a pass
78 yrs old, over 400 days in solitary, released as winter and a pandemic which kills the elderly with great efficiency grips the nation.....they are all heart, those Aussies....
Bee here:
Thank you, Lord! I am so glad Cardinal Pell's ordeal is finally over.
God bless.
Bee
Juries can be perverse, and the Pell trial came in the wake of the Royal Commission findings which were highly critical of the Catholic Church. What surprised me was that the Court of Appeal failed to overturn the verdict.
John Nolan,
I agree. I read a fairly extensive story on Cardinal Pell's situation and for that jury not to have had reasonable doubt is quite baffling. The facts just did not add up - at all.
This has been very strange. I tried to gather as much as I could from Australian press but they were very much biased against him. The articles were strong allegations but not much evidence. It would be nice to have conclusive evidence that he didn’t do it because it seems his release will only harden public opinion against him and the Church. Contrary to what Pell’s lawyer said it was, and is, a trial for the Church. Now I am afraid he will be dragged through court again and sued. What is the reason for such hostility toward the Church in Australia?
"What is the reason for such hostility to the (Catholic) Church in Australia?"
I believe the main reasons why many in Australia are so hostile to the Catholic Church are that many HATE that a major institution still officially teaches that abortion is wrong and seriously sinful and homosexual acts are wrong and sinful.
As simple as that.
Many journalists in Australia (especially ABC journalists) are left of centre, secular humanist types.
It is often clear they hate the Catholic Church and many of it's teachings more than they hate child sex abuse. That is why there has been so little focus, and not the same level of outrage,when child sex abuse has been shown to occur in state schools and state institutions, the scouting movement, indigenous communities, sports organizations and the navy (when they accepted many teenage recruits) and on and on.
Also, in the past 30 years there has been no significant media coverage of the reality of many single mothers having boyfriends and short term defacto partners who abuse the children of those single mothers.
Going after the Catholic Church, damaging it's image, reputation and influence is to many their agenda and far more important to them than the maximum number of perpetrators being bought to justice and the maximum number of victims receiving acknowledgement and support.
For many journalists and others in Australia it is as though they want the Australian population conditioned to:
Think of the child sex abuse/think the Catholic Church and Catholic priesthood.
Think of the Catholic Church and Catholic priesthood/think child sex abuse.
Anon PGK.
Most people in the Australian media are to varying degrees "anti-Pell".
But I can strongly recommend googling "George Pell Andrew Bolt" for articles with a fairer and saner perspective on the endless pursuit and persecution of Cardinal Pell in Australia.
https://youtu.be/kMw-LaCX9Fk
A brief summary of the persecution of Cardinal Pell.
Thanks for the links. I had seen much of this before and had read Andrew Bolt, too. It is confusing and not a little scary that this sort of thing can progress so far. I can understand that the Australian government would consider the Catholic Church a criminal organization based on the nefarious activities associated with the hierarchy at Pell’s level. The same sort of prosecution happens with organized crime, ala Al Capone. What I do not understand is the risk to the Commonwealth of having the credibility of the law enforcement and legal systems destroyed. It places them on par with the worst stereotype of the Church.
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