Cardinal Pell’s guilty verdict is old news but Australia just lifted the gag order that most journalists ignored months ago.
Pell is no McCarrick and many believe he was framed. Who knows but God and victims.
But, how in the name of God could sexual abuse or molestation occur in this setting?
In a piece by Ed Condon, he questions the guilty verdict. Perhaps a one size fits all Church justice for clerics needs reexamination. Civil law has no such thing. I wonder if it would be unjust to remove Pell from the clerical state?
This is Condon’s take:
“They have convicted an innocent man,” one source directly familiar with the evidence told CNA. “What’s worse is that they know they have.”
An individual who attended the entire trial in person but is unconnected with Pell’s legal team, told CNA that Pell’s lawyers had made an “unanswerable defense.”
“It was absolutely clear to everyone in that court that the accusations were baseless. It wasn’t that Pell didn’t do what he’s accused of – he clearly couldn’t have done it.”
The allegations are understood to concern Pell assaulting the two choristers in the sacristy of Melbourne cathedral on several occasions immediately following Sunday Mass.
The defense presented a range of witnesses who testified that the cardinal was never alone in the sacristy with altar servers or members of the choir, and that in all the circumstances under which the allegations are alleged to have taken place, several people would have been present in the room.
The sacristy in Melbourne’s Cathedral has large open-plan rooms, each with open arches and halls, and multiple entrances and exits, the defense noted.
Defense attorneys also produced a range of witnesses who testified that Pell was constantly surrounded by priests, other clergy, and guests following Sunday Masses in the cathedral, and that choristers had a room entirely separate from the sacristy in which they changed as a group, before and after Mass.
5 comments:
The one fact that sticks out is that Pell went back to Australia willingly to clear his name. He could have stayed at the Vatican. I know nothing about the politics/Church in Australia. If there is someone who posts here that does, it would be interesting to get their take on this.
The media in the West has been very successful in imbibing the impression that the Catholic Church is synonymous with child abuse. It will be increasingly difficult for Catholics to get a just trial anywhere in the West.
The world of guilty until proven innocent is a burden that is near impossible to overcome. I have a strong feeling this is what happened in this case, even though evidence to the contrary was presented. (Put another way, he was doomed from the start)
An Australian non-Catholic journalist, Andrew Bolt, wrote today what many Australians believe that is that Cardinal Pell was wrongly convicted and has been made to pay for the sins of his church and a media campaign of vilification. Cardinal Pell is a scapegoat, not a child abuser.
Journalist Miranda Devine wrote today that the verdict is devastating too because of what it says about the fallibility of the justice system, although after Lindy Chamberlain, we know the power of irrational mobs to pervert justice.
How hard it must have been to find 12 impartial souls after the campaign of vilification against Pell over the past two decades and the carefully orchestrated drip feed of lurid allegations by Victoria police to selected media against the backdrop of shocking revelations of child sex abuse by clergy around the world.
For a long time many have hated Pell because he is a conservative Catholic, the implacable enemy who stood in the way of "progress" in the Church. While fellow Catholics crumbled and appeased, Pell unequivocally defended Church teachings and refused to compromise over gay marriage, euthanasia, abortion, or wedge issues such as communion for divorcees.
There is so much evil st work here. Is Cardinal Pell a monstrosity or aa martyr? On God, he and any actual or so-called victims know.
The danger of false allegations in this area for political, religious or vengeance is quite possibl, plausible and another aspect of this horrid scandal.
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