Cardinal George Pell admits he was ‘overly optimistic’ after being wrongly convicted of the child sex abuse offences that derailed his career during a candid interview from his Vatican flat
- He was convicted in 2018 of five counts of sexually abusing two 13-year-old boys
- Pell spent 404 days behind bars before his six-year jail sentence was overturned
- He now lives in Rome and said he was confident he’d get bail before sentencing
- Pell, 79, was granted bail after he was convicted to have surgery on his knee
Cardinal George Pell has admitted he was ‘excessively optimistic’ he would be granted bail after being wrongly convicted of child sex abuse charges.
Australia’s highest-ranking Catholic official was convicted in December 2018 of five counts of sexually abusing two 13-year-old choirboys at Melbourne’s St Patrick’s Cathedral in 1996.
He spent 404 days behind bars before his six-year jail sentence was overturned in a final appeal to the High Court in April 2020.
Pell, who turns 80 next month, has since returned to his life in Rome having left his job as prefect of the Vatican’s economy ministry in 2017 to face the charges.
‘Looking back, I was probably excessively optimistic that I’d get bail,’ Pell said during a candid interview from his flat in the Italian city.
Cardinal George Pell has admitted he was ‘excessively optimistic’ he’d be granted bail despite having been convicted of child sex abuse charges that would later be quashed
Pell leaves the Supreme Court of Victoria in Melbourne in June 2019 while appealing his conviction for sexually abusing two choirboys
The 79-year-old was granted bail after the wrongful conviction in December 2018 to undergo knee surgery.
He didn’t spend his first night behind bars until the end of February, 2019 ahead of being sentenced the following month.
Pell’s comments come ahead of the release of the second volume of his jailhouse memoir, ‘Prison Journal, Volume 2,’ chronicling the middle four months of his term.
The book charts his emotional low after the appeals court upheld his initial conviction, and ends with a sign of hope after Australia’s High Court agreed to hear his case.
Pell still has many detractors – he freely uses the term ‘enemies’ – who think him guilty.
But in Rome, even many of his critics believed in his innocence, and since returning in September he has enjoyed a well-publicised papal audience and participates regularly in Vatican events.
Pell returned to Rome in September not with the intention to stay but has now returned to his previous life in the Italian city
Pell had returned to Rome to clean out his apartment, intending to make Sydney his permanent home but he never left, now saying he’s become ‘very Italian’ – and has made checking the country’s Covid-19 statistics every morning a priority.
Earlier this week, the cardinal revealed the ‘humiliating’ strip searches were the worst part of his stint in prison.
‘Jail is undignified, you’re at the bottom of the pit, you’re humiliated, but by and large I was treated decently,’ he said during a radio interview with Irish reporter Colm Flynn on the BBC World Service.
‘The worst single thing I suppose were the strip searches, the brief humiliating… the ignominy of it is probably the worst of it.
Pell has spent time in some of Victoria’s most dangerous prisons, including Barwon Prison near Geelong (pictured)
Pell is seen at a consistory ceremony at St Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican in November last year
‘I wasn’t too uncomfortable. [I had] a firm base for a bed, a hot shower and that’s very important to Australians. The food, there was too much of it.
Pell’s 13-month spell in jail was spent in Barwon Prison, near Geelong, and the Melbourne Assessment Prison.
‘One of the lessons from my time in jail is that the Christian package works,’ he said.
‘If you believe there is a God, if you believe that ultimately all things will be well, that ultimately in the afterlife there will be peace and harmony and justice, if you really believe that, (it doesn’t) matter what terrible thing might happen to you here.’