CHURCH OFFICIAL’S GUILTY VERDICT HUSHED IN MEDIA

The third-highest ranked member of the Vatican, Cardinal George Pell, has been convicted in Australia of molesting two choirboys in the 1990s. However, media there can’t report on the case because of a court-ordered publication ban.

The order was meant to ensure impartiality during the cardinal’s Melbourne trial, but it has been slammed in Australia as censorship. The headline Thursday in the Herald Sun, a paper in Melbourne, read in large type: CENSORED.

Pell, 77, was accused of abusing the boys at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in 1996. At that time he was archbishop of Melbourne.

After Pell’s first trial in June was declared a mistrial, a jury in his second trial returned a unanimous verdict on Tuesday. However the ban remains in place as Pell faces another trial in 2019.