Becciu blocked Cardinal Pell’s financial investigation team from examining the Secretariat of State accounts, and was instrumental in destroying the team’s efforts. They had already found €300m in undeclared accounts salted away by various dicasteries. Pell’s chief auditor, Libero Milone, was sacked for no good reason, as were other competent members of the team.

At that time Pope Francis was backing Becciù.

I have heard Cardinal Pell speak in England on at least three occasions, and have had personal conversations with him. He said it’s very difficult inside the Vatican to sort out who is honest and who is, shall we say, dissembling. And then, among the honest and trustworthy ones, who is competent and who is not.

Many have suggested that the accusations of child abuse against Archbishop George Pell were motivated by characters inside the Vatican, who wanted to destroy his financial investigations. There are 2020 reports in the Italian media and DW of Australian police probing a secret €700,000 transfer of funds from Becciu to person or persons unknown in Australia.

George Pell was wrongly convicted of ridiculous offences against altar servers in Melbourne Cathedral. To anyone who understands priests’ and bishops' vestments, the charges were patently absurd. He would have needed four hands to do, wearing vestments, what was alleged. A ten-minute demonstration in court could have proved this.

The trial showed how abysmal was the state of justice in Victoria, and how malevolent the “Get Pell" campaign was. The Victoria Police had spent two years trawling for accusations against the Cardinal. It was really an anti-Catholic hate campaign.

Cardinal Pell served two years in prison, before the verdict was unanimously overturned by Australia's Supreme Court. Those who gave perjured evidence seem not to have been investigated. The whole thing was a filthy, filthy business, a travesty of justice, the persecution of a good man who opposed the politically correct canons of secular liberalism in his country. Yes, there have been dreadful cases of clerical child abuse in Australia, and guilty priests, but that does not make it right to fabricate a malevolent case against a good man.

When the channelling of funds by Becciu to his relatives in Sardinia came to light, Pope Francis suddenly dropped him like a hot potato. But Cardinal Pell and his staff were never reinstated.

What Cardinal Pell did tell us was that if proper financial controls had been in place, the controls and checks his team wanted to bring in, the Secretariat of State's disastrous speculation with Peter's Pence charity funds on the Kensington and Chelsea London property market, could never have taken place.

They lost close to €200,000,000 on that and associated “deals", and have had to sell property in Italy (?) to cover the losses. Have heads rolled over this disgraceful episode? What do you think?

Some of the Pell-Becciu clash resulted from the divergent Anglo-Saxon versus Italian approaches to financial administration. You get the point, I'm sure.

I think it will be hard. I know a lot of people who have already proclaimed the guy guilty and are relishing in the fact that he might be serving time for his crimes. They’re gleefully looking forward to him getting locked up and getting the justice he deserves.

I’m not a Catholic but I do believe someone is innocent until proven guilty. I know that there are Catholic clergy who have committed horrible abuses but there are also far more Catholic priests who are appalled by their colleagues crimes. I’m not excusing Pell’s past behaviour defending sex abusers but just because he wasn’t open and transparent as an Archbishop doesn’t automatically mean he was a sex offender as a younger man.

I haven’t seen any of the evidence against him and can’t judge whether he’s guilty or not. It’s possible every accusation against him is entirely true, it’s also possible he’s entirely innocent, but most of the feeling I’m seeing is that the guy is definitely guilty. That’s going to make it hard to find a fair jury.

It’s already happened. The Pope has removed Pell from one of his posts in the Church’s hierarchy.

Other than that:

• other Church clerics will become increasingly nervous and maybe even more careful;
• the Pope will appoint somebody else for the vacant position;
• the Church will continue business pretty much as before; and
• wait for the attention and fuss to die down again.

The Church’s attitude is: “We have weathered many storms before this one, we lasted 2000 years, this proves we’re eternal and we’ll keep on trucking.”

I dearly hope to live long enough to see them proved wrong. Churches are closing down at record rates in Europe, but they’re still trying to expand in Africa.

The significance is that the Church really needs to do a better job of vetting its senior officials. Let us not pretend that the Catholic Church is a collection of plaster cast saintly men and women. As has often been remarked, the Church is much more an hospital for sinners than a museum of saints. Nevertheless, it is scandalous that men such as Cardinal Pell and Archbishop McCarrick (in the USA) rose to such eminence in the Church. Of course, Cardinal Pell had been convicted of no crime when he was appointed and allegations only surfaced after his appointment. Thus at the time of his appointment he was, as far as the public and the Pope were concerned, innocent of any crime.

Cardinal Pell was chosen, not because or even in spite of his crimes and sins which were not publicly known, but because of his financial competence. He was appointed to oversee the reform of the Vatican’s finances and bring financial management up to date at the Vatican. Ironically, it was his job to see that financial scandals would no longer mar the reputation of the Holy See, the Vatican State and the Vatican Bank (Instituto per le Opere della Religione - IOR).

Now that he has been convicted by secular courts in Australia, Cardinal Pell is undergoing investigation by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Thus he is being investigated to see if there is the evidence to convict him of a crime under canon law, and if so, what the penalty would be for such a crime. This is entirely appropriate. The Church could not pre-empt the proceedings in secular courts, but now that a verdict has been rendered, she must investigate whether crimes have been committed against her own law. Under canon law no-one may be punished without going through due process in her own courts.

Theodore McCarrick, a disgraced former cardinal, entered a plea of Not Guilty on charges of sexual assault in September 2021. His case is ongoing. He’s one of many cardinals guilty of covering up such crimes, although he’s the highest level official who had credible accusations that he personally engaged himself.

The trial for current Cardinal Angelo Becciu for financial crimes is also ongoing in the Vatican. Nine other defendants have also been charged in the trial, and the question of financial management of the Church’s assets is an area of ongoing upheaval.

Court cases tend to move very slowly and can take years to fully resolve.

Unfortunately, the Catholic Church in Australia is already grievously damaged by revelations that 4,444 allegations of incidents of abuse between January 1980 and February 2015 had been made to Catholic Church authorities, and by the fact that allegations had been made against some 7 per cent of the priests during that period as well as numerous brothers and lay persons in the Church. People in Australia were astounded to learn that 40.4 per cent of the Brothers of St John of God, 22 per cent of Christian Brothers and large numbers of other religious had been credibly accused. Cardinal Pell has already suffered reputational damage from witness statements to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, including that Pell should have known of some of these offences and did nothing to protect the children or bring perpetrators to justice. Untested allegations were also made that Pell inappropriately dealt with boys on at least two occasions.

Cardinal Pell is entitled to the presumption of innocence and a trial will actually give him a chance to clear his name. If he is found guilty he will, unfortunately, be just one more name in a long list of Australian priests accused of these crimes, although most others have escaped prosecution. There would probably be a sigh of relief that Cardinal Pell will do no further damage to the Church in Australia, and the hierarchy will do its best to recover from what could have been a greater disaster for the Church in Australia.

It has been suggested, without evidence, that Pope Francis transferred Cardinal Pell to Rome in order to place him outside the reach of the Australian authorities. If so, this strategem has backfired. Pell was able to avoid further appearances at the Royal Commission, because his ill health made air travel inadvisable, but the Royal Commission made alternative arrangements for him to appear by video link from Rome. That this occurred in Rome took his witness testimony from an antipodes backwater to the centre of the Catholic faith and world attention.

The fact that the transfer to Rome made Cardinal Pell one the most senior cardinals was a risk because, if any charges were laid against him, he would be back in the world spotlight. If Pope Francis thought of this matter, it probably seemed a small risk, as no cardinal had previously been prosecuted in a civil court on such a grave matter.

Now that Cardinal Pell is to be charged, the worst possible outcome for the Church is probably a no-trial on technical grounds, or a failure of the Cardinal to attend on the grounds of ill-health or diplomatic privilege. The mere fact the he has been charged causes worldwide reputational damage to the Church and this can only be alleviated by his complete exoneration.

On the other hand, if Pell is found guilty of any acts committed by him against minors, then the Church will be damaged. The extent of that damage depends on the number and seriousness of charges sustained by the court. The Catholic Church will survive, as it always has, but it will be forced to take a very different approach to the protection of children in its care.

Cardinal George Pell has had some very serious allegations made about his alleged conduct over the past few decades.

To date none of these allegations have been proven so he is entitled to the presumption of innocence unless a Court of Law finds otherwise at a future time.

Yes there is a Royal Commission in progress and the Catholic Church and associated bodies are hardly smelling roses as the allegations, stories and statistics are tabled. The statistics are shocking, damming and appalling.

To their credit the Catholic Church did give advance warning to churchgoers from the pulpit prior to the Royal Commission and warned the congregation that there were some very serious adverse statistics and stories about to be aired.

I’m not sure if its coincidence or a result of the warm weather that we are experiencing in Brisbane currently however a number of regular parishioners have commented that Church attendances appear to have declined.

Whilst there will many who disagree with my thoughts I am of the view that until such time as Pell is charged then he has no case to answer and any calls for him to be indicted should be ignored.

I was not present at the trial and have only heard a summary of the arguments on both sides. What impressed me about the prosecution case was that the witness could accurately describe the sacristy, a room that he had been forbidden to enter.

Cardinal Pell’s defence was that the young boys could not have sneaked away from their group, nor entered the sacristy, and that he did not accost them there. His defence provided no reasonable explanation of how the boy, now a grown man, could have been able to describe the contents and furnishings of the sacristy in such detail.

I imagine that if the defence case had been that Pell had indeed accosted the boys in the sacristy and demanded they leave immediately, with nothing improper having occurred, the prosecution case might have been much weaker. By distancing himself from the event to the extent even of denying that the boys could have been in the room, Pell no doubt sought to leave no room for doubt about his own innocence, but it may have backfired. The trouble with lies is that they have unintended consequences.

The conspiracy theory seems to be that the conviction of Cardinal Pell was in some way retribution for his work in beginning to uncover systemic corruption in the Vatican. Without downplaying the value of the work Pell had undertaken in the Vatican, that is rubbish.

Cardinal Pell was convicted by a jury in a civil trial in Victoria, Australia, under a widely respected judge. There was no opportunity for Church interference in the trial, most of which was conducted behind closed doors, as is common practice with trials involving sexual abuse.

The Catholic Church did not provide financial support for Pell’s defence, but this obviously did not matter, either. He hired a team of lawyers that included arguably the best, and probably the most expensive, criminal defence lawyer in the country.

It is very possible that Pell is only the beginning with others to follow along with McCarrick. Depending upon when these actions occurred, the implications going up, down and around the hierarchy would be overwhelming to say nothing of the tremendous angst from the pews. The initial implications would be beyond a person’s understandings while the after affects (in the following years) may be very positive with various changes in the structure. Pay attention to the concepts behind the “synods”, watch the outburst between the conservatives and post Vatican ll Church, and lastly, the geographical Church will come to the forefront. When you consider these issues and others, we humans can not comprehend what will occur.

It will depend, I believe, on the charges. If the charges are that the cardinal participated in the physical sexual abuse of minors, it will add to the Australian Government's vendetta against the Catholic Church. If the charges are that the Cardinal followed the advice of the psychiatrists at the time in his handling of abuse charges against priests in Australia, it will have little effect. If it turns out that the charges are from some recovered memory of forty years ago from a serial abuse witness, it will damage the Australian judicial much more than the Church.
I doubt it will have any effect on the view of the current Pope held by Catholics. These seem to be pretty much set, and I doubt that nothing he says or does will change them.

Yes.

Australia has an excellent record of prosecuting high profile people.

Ignore the Pell claims of total innocence. As a high school teacher, I hear Legal Studies students return from visiting our state’s high security prison each year, having learnt that every inmate is completely innocent. Well, that’s what the inmates say.

It is significant to me that charges have even been laid. Victoria Police has a high proportion of Catholics among its ranks. The fact that they have been able and willing to put together the case against Pell says an awful lot to me. It took a while, and must have ultimately taken some courage on their part to this. I suspect the case is strong.

There are currently no outstanding charges against George Pell. If there were Australia would seek his extradition from the Vatican. However there is currently a Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse being conducted in Australia. Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

The Royal Commission has been conducting hearings since 2013 and its Final Report is expected in December 2017. The Royal Commission has the power to make recommendations on, among other things:

d. what institutions and governments should do to address, or alleviate the impact of, past and future child sexual abuse and related matters in institutional contexts, including, in particular, in ensuring justice for victims through the provision of redress by institutions, processes for referral for investigation and prosecution and support services. (From the Commission’s Terms of Reference)

We will have to wait to see what the Commission’s findings and recommendations are to see what, if anything it recommends, about George Pell.

There are other matters under investigation by the Victoria Police, currently being reviewed by the Victorian Director of Public Prosecutions, but at this time no charges have been laid.

It appears that Cardinal Pell did receive a fair trial on charges of child sexual abuse. At a first trial, the jury was unable to reach a verdict, so a second trial was ordered. The judge instructed the potential jurors that if they felt unable to treat the evidence without bias because they feel they could not find him either guilty or not guilty, they should disqualify themselves. He was found guilty in 2018, but news of his conviction was suppressed so that a further trial on related matters could proceed without bias. The judge in that second trial ruled certain evidence against Pell inadmissible and these further charges were dropped.

The evidence is that in each case, the courts have acted with impeccable impartiality. Cardinal Pell received a fair trial on charges of of sexual penetration of a child under 16 and four other charges concerned with the abuse of children. The present archbishop of Melbourne says he has confidence in the Australian legal system and believes that Cardinal Pell received a fair trial.

Without having heard all of the evidence beyond what was reported in the media, and without having any legal training, it’s hard to say.

Six years, though, does seem closer to the lower end of the possible sentences Pell could have been given. The judge made the point a couple of times during the sentencing that he was aware that Pell could die in jail, which is certainly something which could happen. Whether or not that’s entirely desirable is a different question.

The good news, though, is that he’s been sentenced to jail and listed as a sex offender. Both of those are good, if not necessarily great, outcomes as far as justice is concerned.