Pope decries ‘unjust sentences’ after Cardinal Pell acquitted of sex crimes

CARDINAL George Pell welcomed Australia’s highest court clearing him of child sex crimes and said his trial had not been a referendum on the Catholic Church’s handling of the clergy abuse crisis.

Pope Francis’ former finance minister had been the most senior Catholic found guilty of sexually abusing children and spent 13 months in prison before seven High Court judges unanimously dismissed his convictions.

“I have consistently maintained my innocence while suffering from a serious injustice,” the cardinal said in his first public statement since he was convicted in December 2018. The statement was released before he left prison and he was taken to the Carmelite Monastery in Melbourne where he was greeted by a nun.

Pope Francis appeared to refer to the cardinal’s acquittal in his morning homily, saying he was praying for all those unjustly persecuted. He recalled the “persecution that Jesus suffered” and prayed for those who suffer “unjust sentences”.

The cardinal said: “I hold no ill will toward my accuser”, a former choirboy whose evidence was at the core of the 78-year-old cleric’s prosecution. The High Court found there was reasonable doubt surrounding the evidence of the witness, now the father of a young family aged in his 30s, who said the then archbishop had abused him and another 13-year-old choirboy at St Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne in the late 1990s.

“My trial was not a referendum on the Catholic Church; nor a referendum on how Church authorities in Australia dealt with the crime of paedophilia in the Church,” the cleric said.

“The point was whether I had committed these awful crimes, and I did not,” he added.

A judge and lawyers had urged two juries in 2018 to try the cardinal on the evidence and not on his senior position in the Church’s flawed responses to clergy abuse in Australia.

The first trial ended in a jury deadlock and the second unanimously convicted him on all charges. The Survivors’ Network of those Abused by Priests said in a statement they were “dismayed and heartbroken” by the decision.

Sydney Archbishop Anthony Fisher called for the ruling to end the pursuit of the cardinal in the courts. “I am pleased that the cardinal will now be released and I ask that the pursuit of him that brought us to this point now cease,” Archbishop Fisher said

“The cardinal’s vindication today invites broader reflection on our system of justice, our commitment to the presumption of innocence, and our treatment of high-profile figures accused of crimes,” he added.

Melbourne Archbishop Peter Comensoli said he had never doubted the cardinal’s innocence.

“My knowledge of him was when he said he was innocent, I accepted that,” he told reporters.

Where the cardinal will go and whether he will return to Rome has not been announced.