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 was outrageous that for over a year the Victoria State Police ran their “Get Pell” campaign, advertising in newspapers, inviting complainants to step forward and make accusations against the Cardinal.

It took over a year, and all the accusations made, bar one, were dismissed as insubstantial or false.

The media witchhunt against Cardinal Pell was outrageous. In particular the way the ABC treated the issue, fuelling public hatred of him. He was used as a whipping boy for the failures of the Australian Catholic Church to properly tackle the issue of clergy sexual abuse.

He admitted these failures and introduced strict protocols to prevent them recurring. He was one of the toughest bishops in tackling the problems.

The Cardinal was unpopular because he had defended traditional Catholic teaching on marriage and sexuality, against the politically correct LBGTQI etc propaganda. He had also condemned abortion and other liberal sacred cows.

Then this case of this anonymous ex-choir boy was brought forward and Pell was put on trial.

The first jury found him innocent by 10:2 but the case was retried. It was outrageous that he was subsequently convicted on the unsubstantiated evidence of one prosecution witness, the many other defence witnesses being ignored.

What convinced me of the falsity of the charges was the following:

Anyone who knows a priest’s Mass vestments - alb, stole and chasuble - realizes that it is almost impossible to even have a wee while wearing them without wetting the vestments badly. You need both hands just to hold them up, another hand for the trouser flies, and a fourth hand for the necessary.

The Cardinal, who was quite traditional, may well also have been wearing a cassock under the alb, and a light dalmatic under the chasuble: four layers. Plus around his neck pectoral cross and pallium. So he had four layers of vestments besides trousers and underpants presumably.

To force a 13 year old unwilling boy, nay, allegedly two such boys, to perform oral sex on him, he would have needed five or six arms and hands. All this supposedly in a public sacristy about 10 mins after the end of High Mass, where any number of cathedral staff might have walked by at any moment.

There were only two Sundays that autumn when Cardinal Pell celebrated that Mass in the cathedral, he was always accompanied by his Master of Ceremonies, and he habitually stayed in the cathedral porch for up to 20 mins straight after Mass, greeting people and chatting with them.

Then the fact that an important choir practice was in progress straight after Mass and the boys’ supposed absence was never noticed?

There was a genuine case of child abuse in the USA, where a pervert Monsignor found an altar boy drinking the wine in the parish sacristy after Mass one day. He gave him more wine to get him drunk, invited him into his rooms and sexually abused him. He was convicted and sent down.

One wonders if this account gave some inspiration to the accuser of Cardinal Pell?

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.

Because there was originally scheduled to be a second trial on separate charges. That is to say, the charges were broadly similar, but the events took place at a separate time.

The concern with a situation like that is that if there had been extensive coverage of the first trial - and a trial of a very prominent religious leader on charges of sexual assault of children will be extensively covered by its very nature - that could prejudice future juries. People may conclude “Oh, Pell’s clearly guilty of this second crime because he’s already been found guilty of doing the same thing earlier”, which is (from a legal perspective) the same as saying “The defendant has committed a robbery earlier, so she’s clearly guilty of committing this second robbery.” If you can see the logical flaw there, well done.

Subsequently, however, the Crown opted not to go ahead with the second trial. I can’t remember off the top of my head why not, and I’m not in a position where I can find out easily. But since there was no longer going to be a jury to hear the evidence, it didn’t matter if the earlier outcome was made public.

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.

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.

It is rare that an appeal court overturns a jury’s decision (usually in criminal cases, if a conviction is overturned it is because of a technicality of law, not because the appeal judges consider the jury to have erred). Rarer still that it does so in such a way that the accused cannot be retried for the offense. I have not read the unanimous decision of the seven judges involved in overturning Cardinal Pell’s conviction, but they must have had compelling reasons to believe that the case against Cardinal Pell was definitely not proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

The most plausible explanation is that the jury was swayed by media reports rather than an examination of the evidence presented.

I’m not sure if the question is suggesting that the decision by the appeal court was outrageous, or that the initial charges against a man now deemed innocent were outrageous. If the latter, then the answer seems to be “Yes”.

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.

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.

With the lovely details:

Probably around January 897, Stephen VI ordered that the corpse of his predecessor Formosus be removed from its tomb and brought to the papal court for judgment. With the corpse propped up on a throne, a deacon was appointed to answer for the deceased pontiff.

and

According to Liutprand, Stephen VI said: "When you were bishop of Porto, why did you usurp the universal Roman See in such a spirit of ambition?"

The appointed deacon, one trusts, was not well versed in ventriloquism.

And of course, live by the sick political spectacle, die by the political spectacle:

The macabre spectacle turned public opinion in Rome against Stephen. Formosus' body washed up on the banks of the Tiber, and rumor said it had begun to perform miracles. A public uprising deposed and imprisoned Stephen. He was strangled in prison in July or August 897

The sequence runs:

• January 897: Stephen VI pulls the Cadaver synod stunt. Sergius bishop of Caere is co-judge.
• August 897: Stephen VI is strangled in prison. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer pontiff.
• December 897: Theodore II annuls the Cadaver synod, and reburies Formosus in St Peter’s.
• December 897: Theodore II dies. Pope for 20 days.
• January 898. John IX and Sergius III, former bishop of Caere, both get elected Pope. John IX gets the actual gig.
• 898: John IX convenes two synods upholding Theodore II, and banning any future trials of corpses.
• 900: John IX dies.
• 904: Sergius III finally becomes pope, and it’s payback time. Sergius III annuls Theodore II’s and John IX’s decrees, which means putting corpses on trial is A-OK.
• Liutprand throught Sergius also dug Formosus up yet again, but apparently that’s because Liutprand thought Sergius III and Stephen VI were the same person.
• And… I don’t know that any pope since has officially ruled that no, putting corpses on trial is not A-OK.

The Saeculum obscurum, “Dark century”, Italian historians called the fifty years starting with Sergius III, although things were clearly not peachy the decade before. The pornocracy “rule of whores”, German historians went with, because of all the political influence that popes’ mistresses wielded.

Historian Will Durant refers to the period from 867 to 1049 as the "nadir of the papacy".

And I mean yeah. Why single out Sergius III as the start of the problem in 904, for having making his 15 year old girlfriend Marozia senatrix? At least Sergius didn’t personally put a corpse on trial, seven years before that.

This is an 80 minute YouTube podcast on the Cadaver Synod that I’m not going to watch. It’s the Christmas 2019 ep; Seasons Greetings! Tell me if I’ve missed anything :-)

+JMJ+

Yes, you are referring to the Cadaver Synod:

The Cadaver Synod: When a Dead Pope Was Put on Trial

By: Carrie Whitney, Ph.D. | Apr 24, 2020

Pope Formosus' body was exhumed in 897 and his corpse was put on trial by Pope Stephen. HowStuffWorks - Learn How Everything Works!

Exhumations happen. Sometimes it's during a criminal trial; other times it's to identify historical figures; then there are times when it's used to simply determine paternity. Whatever the reason, there have been many cited cases throughout history when authorities have had to reexamine the physical evidence of the dearly departed.

But having an actual cadaver stand trial for crimes already excused is when things start to get way more unusual. That's exactly what happened in 897 C.E. when the body of Pope Formosus was unearthed and taken to a courtroom presided over by the then-current pope whose only intention was to find Pope Formosus guilty.

The trial is known as the Cadaver Synod. The "cadaver" part is easy to understand considering Formosus' actual dead body sat accused. But if you're not familiar with the term synod, it is an ecclesiastical council or gathering where decisions about issues related to faith or disciplinary matters are determined.

While trying a dead body would be unimaginable in Vatican City today, the Cadaver Synod took place during a time when political machinations ruled the papacy, long before 11th-century reforms that regulated papal elections. It was a time when there was little distinction between private property and public trust, according to Rev. John W. O'Malley, S.J. Popes during the Middle Ages could dispense favor. It was a prize for a family to be aligned with the pope, and there were lots of rivalries. And like many stories, this one begins with the end of a great ruler.

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.

27th Feb, 2019 — He’s in the news today: Cardinal George Pell - Google Search

In June 2017, Pell was charged in Victoria with multiple historical sexual assault offences; he denied all charges. [15][25][26] Due to the charges raised against him, Pope Francis removed Pell from the Council of Cardinal Advisers on 16 August 2018.[30]

On 11 December 2018, Pell was found guilty on five charges related to sexual misconduct involving two boys in the 1990s.[31][32][33] Pell's conviction was subject to a gag order issued by Judge Peter Kidd, which suppressed coverage of the conviction by Australian media companies to avoid prejudicing a pending separate trial.[34][35][36][37] Pell lodged an appeal against his conviction. After the Victorian Department of Public Prosecutions dropped the second set of charges against Pell, on 26 February 2019, Kidd lifted the gag order.[38][39][40] Pell's bail has been revoked and he is held in custody, with his sentencing by Kidd scheduled for 13 March 2019.[41] — George Pell - Wikipedia

Noted: The charges, the Vatican response and Pell’s conviction were reported in a timely fashion outside of Australia. Internally, the Australia was subject to the court gag order (to avoid prejudice).

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.

If it were obvious, then they would be unable to convict. The issue is that it is hard to prove someone innocent. Let us say for example that I accuse you of murdering someone at 3 AM last night. I say, see you had an argument/fender bender with this person 5 years ago! How would you actually prove you’re innocent??? If you had, let us say three people that were close to you provide an alibi and I then said, they are clearly lying for you, would you be thinking, it is a good thing that people presume innocence until proven guilty? The issue is that there is usually plenty of evidence left behind when someone is guilty, but when someone hasn’t been at a crime scene, there is no evidence left behind. It becomes an issue of proving some alternative was definitely the case. Otherwise, someone could continue to prosecute anyway. Fortunately, we have a system that, at least sometimes, adheres to the principle of presumption of innocence. There are actually many cases that had to be overturned, but only a very few were obvious false convictions before hand. It may be that someone else came forward years later to confess, as one somewhat common example. Generally, people only intentionally falsely convict if there is some extreme lurking variable involved. Seeing as people rarely intentionally falsely convict, people are rarely falsely convicted when it is an obvious false conviction.

Josh gave you a great source; The Innocence Project. There are also a number of well respected studies that address the issue. One of the better ones, published in 2014, is Rate of false conviction of criminal defendants who are sentenced to death.

The generally accepted number, among researchers and advocates, is that 4% of those convicted and given the death penalty are actually innocent. Consider that there are a bit over 2,800 death row inmates in the US, that would mean that there are 112+/- innocent people on death row.

It is important to also note that the number has dropped in the last 20 years. One big reason is that DNA advances now allow for testing of evidence not available in the past. Any form of personal transfer evidence, such as hair fibers, blood, skin, etc., can now be tested with greater accuracy. As an example, in a rape/murder case, the victim may have tried to fight off the attacker, often using her hands to scratch and beat at the perpetrator. Skin found under the victim’s fingernails, along with any pubic hair left behind or semen, can be tested to 98% (or better) accuracy.

Finally, as for the most famous/infamous cases, here is a list that I’ve used when teaching wrongful convictions at the undergraduate and graduate levels. At the top of my list is Dewey Bozella, a former amateur boxer who is best known for being imprisoned for a conviction which was eventually overturned. Convicted in 1983 for the murder of an elderly woman, Bozella served 26 years in prison before his conviction was overturned in 2009. Lawyers discovered new evidence that had been suppressed by prosecutors showing Bozella was in fact innocent and had been framed.

Rubin “Hurricane” Carter fought professionally as a middleweight boxer from 1961 to 1966. In 1966, he was arrested and wrongly convicted for a triple homicide in the Lafayette Bar and Grill in Paterson, New Jersey. He and another man, John Artis, were tried and convicted twice for the murders, but after the second conviction was overturned in 1985, prosecutors chose not to try the case for a third time.

Dr. Samual Holmes Shephard, was accused and convicted of beating to death his pregnant wife Marilyn Reese Sheppard landed him 10 years in the state penitentiary. He was then convicted of murder and earned a sentence of life imprisonment. Although he insisted that his wife was killed by a man with thick dark hair in a white shirt who attacked him as well, no one believed his story until in 1966 when his conviction was overturned in light of new evidence.

General John D Lavelle, who was stripped of his ranks because of allegations of misconduct over bombing missions in the Vietnam war. A little over 20 years after his death, President Obama nominated him posthumously back to the grade of general on the retired list. Information was released that General Lavelle was only following orders and that the misconduct was in fact higher up the chain of command.

And one of the most infamous in the United States was the Salem Witch Trials. This series of prosecutions that led to the untimely deaths of those who were alleged to practice witchcraft in 1692 to 1693 shows how the power struggle of those who are in authority can affect the fate of the innocent lives around them.

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.

Pursuant to a routine plea bargain, the defendant waives his constitutional rights and, under oath, admits facts that satisfy the court that they committed the crime to which they are pleading. So, if they testified honestly under oath and the same facts were proven in a jury trial, the likelihood of success would be unlikely. But, to answer your question, to be “wrongfully convicted,” one must assume that the defendant, for whatever reason, lied under oath when they took the plea bargain and enered their plea. This happens, hopefully in only a small number of cases, for a number of reasons. Once this happens the defendant has an incredibly difficult hill to climb to set aside his plea once it's entered especially if the time for appeal and filing any post sentencing motions has passed. But if they succeed, they would be placed back in the same position they were in prior to entering their plea pursuant to the plea bargain AND they would be afforded their constitutional right to the presumption of innocence when they go to trial. This, of course, does not mean that a jury automatically will find the defendant not guilty at trial. Only that the defendant will be afforded the presumption of innocence at trial. Again, hopefully in only a small number of cases, innocent people are found guilty after a jury trial. Sorry my answer is so lengthy. Hope I helped.

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.

If you plead guilty, you stand up on your hind legs, raise your right hand, and under oath,tell the judge you committed the crime. Sorry, but once you do that, your protestations of innocence are quite dubious. You didn’t go to trial because whether you believe you are “really innocent “ or not, you knew that the outcome of a trial would be worse than the deal you made. Most people give themselves the benefit of the doubt, so if they think they could have beat the case, they would have gone to trial. My experience is that if they pleaded, they correctly concluded that they would not win at trial.