The sentence is a hard blow for Francisco prior to the world summit of bishops to address abuse, scheduled for February
The Pope Francis moves to two cardinals of his circle of advisers closest to being related to sexual abuse of minors
The Church recognizes “openly” abuses and expresses its firm decision to eradicate them
cardinal George Pell, minister of Finances of the Vatican and considered the ‘number three’ of Pope Francis, has been convicted of sexually abusing two minors in Australia. The final judgment will not be made public until February, but several media specialized in religious information have been disseminated by the unanimous decision of the jury issued last Tuesday. It is the largest high office of the catholic Church up to now convicted of a crime of pedophilia and one of the people closest to the Pontiff.
George Pell, prefect of the Secretariat of Economy of the Holy see of 77 years, would have been condemned, according to various catholic media, for having abused two altar boys when he was a bishop in Ballarat during the decade of the 90’s. The identity of the men has not been made public, although it is known that one of them has died and the other testified against Pell by videoconference.
In June of last year, Pell, indicted by the justice australian of having committed sexual abuse of minors and to having covered up cases of pedophilia within the Church during his time as a priest and archbishop in his native Australia, convened by surprise a press conference in the Vatican in which he announced that he was about to travel immediately to their country to defend against the serious charges that weighed on him and that is declared to be completely innocent. “The very idea of sexual abuse it seems to me aberrant,” he said to journalists.
In a gesture unheard of until then, Pope Francis gave a sort of redundancy in their functions how to maximum supervisor of the finances of the vatican during the time of duration of the trial. A process that has been shrouded in the most absolute ‘omerta’, as the Court of Melbourne forbade the australian press to report on it so as to avoid influencing the next cause for the sexual abuse that it has pending, the cardinal and you will come to the courts in march. As reported by the catholic media ‘National Catholic Reporte’r and ‘American Magazine,’ the verdict on the part of the twelve members would have been unanimous after three days of deliberations.
This is not the first time that the shadow of the abuse falls on the ‘super-minister’ of Economy of Francisco. In 2016 a delegation of the commission investigating the response of religious institutions to the pedophilia in Australia over the last few decades, she traveled to Rome to interrogate Pell about his responsibility for the sexual abuses were committed in the parishes of his jurisdiction during the years in which he served as archbishop of Melbourne and Sydney. To the members of the delegation, the cardinal -who until that time had refused to travel to Australia to face justice alleging health problems – acknowledged that he erred in not giving credence to the accusations and is justified by noting that at that time “the normal thing was not to bring them to the police.”
The conviction of George Pell, one of the fundamental pillars of the economic reform desired by Pope Francis in the Curia, is a hard blow for the pontiff argentine, who has always defended the cardinal despite the fact that his name was questioned from the first moment. In fact, some critical voices in the Vatican to ensure that the choice of Pell in 2013 as a member of the C9, the council of cardinals who assist the Pope in the reform of the Curia and in the governance of the Church, was a sort of safe conduct to avoid the elderly cardinal for the public ridicule of having to face justice in their country. A year later, Francis was appointed secretary of the Prefecture for Economic Affairs of the Holy see.
The news comes at a delicate moment in which the Vatican is preparing to face in February a global summit of bishops that will address the abuses within the catholic Church. This Tuesday, the Vatican announced in a statement that Pell ceases to be part of the C9. Next to him, the Pope also dispensed with the cardinal african cardinal Laurent Monsengwo and the chilean Francisco Javier Errázuriz, defendant enChile of having covered up multiple allegations of sexual abuse within the Church. A scandal that caused the resignation of the 34 bishops of the country.
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