Cardinal convicted in sex abuse scandal
Vatican official has declared his innocence
VERONA, Italy — Cardinal George Pell has been convicted in Australia on charges related to sexual abuse, according to two sources familiar with the case and other media reports, becoming the highest ranking Vatican official to face such a punishment.
The conviction provides one of the clearest examples to date of how the sexual abuse scandal has eroded the church’s credibility while ensnaring figures in the upper echelons of power. Pell, who has categorically declared his innocence, had taken a leave of absence from the Vatican’s third most powerful position, as the economy minister, to fight the charges.
The Vatican on Wednesday did not address the explosive case, but it did announce that in October Pope Francis had removed Pell from his advisory group known as the Council of Cardinals, along with a Chilean cardinal, Francisco Javier Errázuriz Ossa, who is accused of covering up for abusive priests. (A third cleric, Congolese Cardinal Laurent Monsengwo Pasinya, was also removed from the council, but has no known connections to abuse and recently retired from his position as the archbishop of Kinshasa.)
Vatican spokesman Greg Burke said Francis was “thanking them for the work they have done over these past five years.” Francis’ tepid responses on specific cases related to high-ranking clerics and abuse have sent his favorability rates plunging. The Vatican announcement came after the council’s latest meeting.
One Australian courtroom source said Pell’s sentencing proceedings would begin in February and that he will be tried next year on additional charges.
This is the second church-related case from Australia to make headlines in recent days. Last week, an Australian appeals court cleared Philip Wilson, the former archbishop of Adelaide, on charges that he helped conceal the sexual abuse of two altar boys by a priest.
The Pell conviction was first reported by the Daily Beast, which said that the charges stemmed from the abuse of two choir boys in the 1990s. His case in Melbourne has unfolded in secrecy because of a court-issued gag order.
That order has led to a blackout in Australia about the news of a figure who was once among the country’s most highly regarded Catholic leaders, the son of a gold miner who rose to become the archbishop in both Melbourne and Sydney. Major Australian outlets on Wednesday did not carry headlines about the case, but some wrote cryptic stories explaining that significant news had unfolded but was unreportable.
“A very high-profile figure was convicted on Tuesday of a serious crime, but we are unable to report their identity due to a suppression order,” Melbourne’s paper, the Age, wrote. The newspaper said that the person “was convicted on the second attempt, after the jury in an earlier trial was unable to reach a verdict.”
A judge in the County Court of Victoria had called earlier this year for the gag order as a way “to prevent a real and substantial risk of prejudice to the proper administration of justice.”
Calls and messages to Pell’s lawyers were not returned.