The late Cardinal Pell was vilified by an anti-Catholic Australian media and may have been set up by greedy Vatican employees to get him out of the way.
Editor’s note: You can read Part 1 of this column here.
In 2014, the newly elected Pope Francis decided to improve the state of the Vatican’s finances. He appointed the Australian cardinal George Pell (1941-2023) to be the first prefect of his new Secretariat for the Economy. Pell was seen as the sort of no-nonsense, thorough, and intelligent cardinal who could corral other cardinals into cleaning up their mess.
Pell ordered audits, established policy guidelines, and began to investigate the financial affairs of different Vatican offices. One would think that simply trying to introduce transparency into the Vatican finances would be non-controversial. One would be wrong.
Just as Pell began to uncover problems, a series of child sexual abuse charges from Australia were leveled at Pell in 2017. While he could have remained in Rome and avoided the trial as others have done, he chose to return to his native country to clear his name.
The Victoria Police had apparently spared no expense in trying to uncover dirt on George Pell—and him alone—going back to 2013. They produced dozens of witnesses in court in 2018, but those alleged witnesses could only offer fuzzy charges and testimonies, which is why the jury could not agree on a verdict.
Their indecision is not surprising because the two strongest allegations against Pell sound ridiculous to anyone who has regularly attended the Catholic Mass. Two boys claimed that Pell exposed himself to them after Mass in the sacristy of the cathedral. But how could Pell reasonably have done that while fully vested for Mass? Why wouldn’t he have been outside the front door of church, like every other priest after a Sunday Mass (including Pell), talking to his parishioners? Where were the other priests who typically accompany a bishop at Mass? And wouldn’t it have been incredibly stupid for a priest to expose himself in a public place like the sacristy, where a random parishioner might show up at any moment to ask for a blessing of a new rosary?
Despite the ludicrousness of the accusations, Pell was convicted during a retrial. He was sentenced to prison in 2019 and spent 404 days in prison, almost entirely in solitary confinement, deprived even of the ability to celebrate Mass.
More: https://x.com/father_rmv/status/2010163805968322694?s=46&t=IydJ-X8H6c0NM044nYKQ0w
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