The Pope has ordered Cardinal George Pell to stay away from children after the Catholic clergyman was convicted of rape and sex assault against two young boys.
Pell, the third most-senior member of the Catholic Church, has also been banned from saying Mass in public until his appeal against the conviction is over.
Acting Holy See spokesman Alessandro Gisotti said Pope Francis is pained by Pell’s conviction and knows it has shocked many people in Australia, where he preaches.
Pope Francis has ordered Cardinal George Pell to stay away from children and banned him from saying Mass in public after he was convicted of rape and sexual assault against two boys
Pell (pictured at court today), the world’s third highest ranking Catholic official, was found guilty in December of raping a choirboy in the 1990s and molesting another
But Francis also noted that Pell ‘has reiterated his innocence and has the right to defend himself’, Gisotti said.
The 77-year-old priest, who serves as the Vatican’s treasurer, could be jailed within weeks after being found guilty of four counts of indecent assault and one count of rape by a Melbourne jury last December.
The trial and verdict could not be reported until now due to a suppression order issued because Pell was due to face another trial on separate child abuse charges.
But those additional charges have now been dropped, and a judge was able to lift the reporting restrictions.
Pell’s victims were two 13-year-old boys on scholarships to the prestigious St Kevin’s College.
The pair ‘nicked off’ after a Sunday solemn mass in late 1996 and were caught swigging sacramental wine in the priest’s sacristy by Pell, newly installed as Archbishop of Melbourne.
‘What are you doing here, you’re in trouble,’ Pell scolded their boys.
The jury was told Pell exposed his penis from beneath his ornate ceremonial robes, and molested the pair.
Pell had repeatedly and vehemently denied the accusations against him and Pope Francis had granted him a leave of absence to return to Australia to defend himself. He has lodged an appeal of his conviction.
One of the victims, now in his 30s, brought the allegations to police after years of having struggled to understand what he’d experienced.
The boy said he was sexually assaulted again by Pell a month or so after he was raped, recalling that he was pushed against a cathedral wall by the now-Cardinal.
Pell sexually assaulted two choir boys in a cathedral in Melbourne, Australia, in the late 1990s. He had vehemently denied the incidents happened, but a jury found otherwise
The cardinal was named the Vatican’s Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy in 2014, making him the third highest-ranking cleric in Rome. He is pictured with Pope Francis
‘He shoved me against the wall violently and squeezed my genitals,’ the court was told.
Pell’s other victim died in 2014 in accidental circumstances.
Top defence barrister Robert Richter QC represented Pell in the trial, and during an earlier trial in which the jury was discharged after failing to reach a verdict.
Mr Richter failed to convince the latest jury that the cathedral’s processes were so seamless that two boys simply could not have ‘nicked off’ unseen.
He argued the allegations were a ‘far-fetched fantasy’, that Pell was always accompanied after mass and that his cumbersome robes would have prevented him revealing his genitals.
‘Cardinal Pell was portrayed as the Darth Vader of the Catholic Church,’ his lawyer, Robert Richter QC said during the trial
‘Only a madman would attempt to rape boys in the priest’s sacristy immediately after Sunday solemn mass,’ he told the jury.
Pell, who was physically ailing during the trial and on crutches before a double knee replacement over Christmas, remains on bail.
Pell limped out of court on Tuesday morning to a media frenzy, with a man screaming out ‘burn in hell, Pell’.
In a statement, one of Pell’s victims said today: ‘Like many survivors, I have experienced shame, loneliness, depression and struggle.
‘Like many survivors it has taken me years to understand the impact upon my life.
‘At some point we realise that we trusted someone we should have feared and we fear those genuine relationships that we should trust. ‘
The jury was told Cardinal Pell scolded the two victims after they ‘nicked off’ from Sunday solemn mass to drink wine. He exposed himself and then molested them, the court was told
Pell’s appearances at court have been accompanied by enormous crowds of media and lines of police officers
He will return to the County Court for a plea hearing on February 27. Chief Judge Peter Kidd is due to sentence him in March.
The victims, both students at St Kevin’s College in Toorak, an inner suburb of Melbourne, were both in the choir at St Patrick’s Cathedral.
The abuse took place after Pell introduced a compensation scheme for clerical sexual abuse victims known in Australia as the ‘Melbourne Response’, which he established in 1996.
An earlier trial resulted in a hung jury in June but the case was heard again in the County Court of Victoria resulting in the guilty verdicts.
The cardinal was committed to stand trial in May when a magistrate dismissed other charges.
Pell was removed from Pope Francis’s inner circle of nine clergymen, the Council of Cardinals, following the verdict in December.
Australian media could not explain why Pell had been dumped at the time.
His downfall brings to the heart of the papal administration a scandal over clerical abuse that has ravaged the Church’s credibility in the United States, Chile, Australia and elsewhere over the last three decades.
Pope Francis, leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, ended a conference on sexual abuse on Sunday, calling for an ‘all-out battle’ against a crime that should be ‘erased from the face of the earth’.
He remained as the Vatican’s treasurer, having been granted a leave of absence by Pope Francis.
The Holy See has not commented on whether he will remain in the position during his appeal.
The judge who heard Cardinal George Pell’s case has continued a gag order on details of the cardinal’s trial and guilty verdicts being published in his homeland. He is pictured in Rome
Pell is the most senior Catholic clergyman to face trial over sexual offences anywhere in the world. He has been ailing in recent months
Pell has surrendered his passport as part of his bail conditions and is not permitted to leave Australia.
The cardinal was named the Vatican’s Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy in 2014, making him the third highest-ranking cleric in Rome.
Before being called to the Vatican, Pell served as Archbishop of Sydney from 2001 to 2014 and was Archbishop of Melbourne from 1996 to 2001.
He was ordained in 1966 and made a cardinal in 2003.
Victorian police charged Pell with the sexual assault offences in June last year when he was in Rome.
Pell, who was represented by attorney Robert Richter, QC, stated at a press conference at the time he would return to Australia to answer the charges and he was ‘looking forward, finally, to having my day in court’.
‘I’m innocent of those charges,’ he said at the time. ‘They are false.’
‘I’m looking forward, finally, to having my day in court,’ George Pell said in June last year. ‘I’m innocent of those charges. They are false.’ He is pictured at court in Melbourne on Tuesday
FROM ALLEGATIONS TO CONVICTION: A TIMELINE OF THE CARDINAL GEORGE PELL CASE
1996
– Pell appointed Archbishop of Melbourne by Pope John Paul II
– Pell sexually abuses two 13-year-old choirboys after a Sunday solemn mass at St Patrick’s Cathedral
– A second indecent act is committed by Pell against one of the choirboys in a corridor at the Cathedral.
2016
– The Herald Sun reports Pell is being investigated by Victoria Police’s Sano taskforce for ‘multiple offences’ committed while he was a priest in Ballarat and Archbishop of Melbourne
– Pell says the allegations are ‘without foundation and utterly false’ and calls for an inquiry into how the police investigation became public
– Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton asks the anti-corruption watchdog to investigate the leak, but denies it came from police
Cardinal George Pell, 77, is known as the Vatican’s treasurer and had been granted a leave of absence while facing trial over child sex offences in Australia. He has surrendered his passport
– Pell gives evidence to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse’s inquiry into abuse in Ballarat
– Under Vatican rules, Pell gives Pope Francis his resignation on his 75th birthday, as is customary. It is not accepted
– Victoria Police investigators hand over to the state’s Office of Public Prosecutions a brief of evidence on allegations of sexual abuse by Pell
– Officers travel to Rome to interview Pell over the abuse claims. He voluntarily participates in the interview.
2017
– Police present their final brief of evidence to the Office of Public Prosecutions to consider charges
– Prosecutors give police the green light to charge Pell.
JUNE 2017
– Pell is charged with multiple counts of historic child sex offences
– He denies the charges and vows to clear his name
– Lawyers for Pell appear in the Melbourne Magistrates Court
– Pell takes leave from his Vatican finance chief role to fight the charges.
JULY 2017
– Pell returns to Australia
– He hires top barrister Robert Richter QC
– Supporters set up a fund to help Pell fight the charges.
MARCH 2018
– Prosecutors drop one of the charges against Pell
– A month-long committal hearing begins to determine if Pell will face trial
– Prosecutors withdraw more charges
– Mr Richter claims police conducted a ‘get Pell operation’ and accuses magistrate Belinda Wallington of bias. She refuses to disqualify herself from the case.
MAY 2018
– Magistrate Belinda Wallington orders Pell stand trial on some charges, but throws out others
– Pell formally pleads ‘not guilty’
– Two trials are ordered, separating the 1970s and 1990s allegations
– A Victorian County Court employee is sacked for looking up information on the Pell case.
AUGUST 2018
– The 1990s ‘cathedral trial’ begins in the Victorian County Court in Melbourne
– Pell pleads not guilty again to one charge of sexual penetration of a child under 16 and four of indecent acts with a child, over incidents involving two 13-year-old choirboys at St Patrick’s Cathedral in 1996.
SEPTEMBER 2018
– The jury is discharged, unable to reach a verdict following a week of deliberation. Some jurors weep.
NOVEMBER 2018
– A retrial begins. The jury aren’t told of the previous hung jury.
DECEMBER 2018
– Pell is found guilty on all charges by an unanimous jury
– Mr Richter says Pell will appeal
– Suppression orders prevent Australian media reporting the verdict but it spreads through international media within hours.
FEBRUARY 2019
– Hearings begin ahead of the second trial. Prosecutors drop another charge
– An appeal is filed against the cathedral trial conviction
– A County Court judge deems vital evidence inadmissible
– Prosecutors withdraw all remaining charges against Pell and drop a second trial over allegations Pell indecently assaulted boys in Ballarat in the 1970s when he was a parish priest
– Pell is due to be taken into custody on Wednesday February 27 as the plea hearing begins.
MARCH 2019
– Pell is due to be sentenced by County Court Chief Judge Peter Kidd.
Australian Associated Press