CARDINAL GEORGE PELL HAS TOLD THE ROYAL COMMISSION: "I'M NOT HERE TO DEFEND THE INDEFENSIBLE."

read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/live-coverage-cardinal-george-pell-appears-before-abuse-royal-commission-in-rome-20160228-gn5xga.html

And he defends the indefensible it by denial, memory loss and a truck-full of apology "from the system"...

Catholic Church's report of its own inquiry in 2002 into a sex-abuse allegation against George Pell (and there is no mention of exoneration)

In October 2002, the Catholic Church in Australia investigated itself concerning an allegation that George Pell had sexually abused a boy at an altar boys' camp. The allegation concerned an alleged incident in the early 1960s, when George Pell (then aged 20) was training to become a priest. The church paid a Victorian barrister, Mr A.J. Southwell Q.C., to conduct an inquiry into the allegation. The church's terms of reference for the inquiry required a very high standard of proof (much higher than the church usually requires when assessing a complaint about clergy sex abuse). Thus, Mr Southwell noted that "I must bear in mind that serious allegations are involved, and that an adverse finding would in all probability have grave, indeed devastating, consequences for the respondent [George Pell]." However, Mr Southwell returned a balanced finding, saying that the former altar boy, when giving evidence, "gave the impression that he was speaking honestly from an actual recollection", while George Pell denied the allegations. The Southwell report contains no mention of George Pell being exonerated.

http://www.brokenrites.org.au/drupal/node/36

gus is going to hell...

George Pell has shifted ground. The news from his latest stint in the box at the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse is that he wasn’t deaf and he wasn’t blind back in the old days in Ballarat.

The cardinal took no body blows. He endured interrogation by Gail Furness SC, counsel assisting the commission, with almost perfect calm. His energy didn’t fail him. In his leathery voice he answered over and again, “That is correct.”

So much of his testimony was familiar. He expressed his regrets. He condemned the failings of the church which he put down to original sin rather than “the divine structure of the church that goes back to the New Testament”.

But he brought something new to the Albergo Quirinale: admissions that he had heard rumours about priests abusing children in the diocese of Ballarat. He had heard complaints. He even admitted knowing about priests kissing and swimming naked with children.

He was not entirely out of the loop.

Since his last appearance in the box, Pell has engaged a team of first-rate lawyers. Perhaps they’ve encouraged him to reflect more deeply on his years in Ballarat when he returned from Oxford with a great career before him in the church.

“My memory is sometimes fallible,” he told the commission. But there seems so much more there than had been supposed. This is encouraging. And the details he gave on Monday save Pell from the fate of simply being disbelieved.

He had heard rumours. Parents raised the issue of abuse with him. So did one or two students. Even priests spoke about it, not as gossip – Pell still deplores gossip – but while “discussing church life”.

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/feb/29/george-pell-heard-rumours-of-sex-abuse-ballarat-royal-commission-rome

It looks like we're going to get Pope George the first... after Francis...

Proceedings just adjourned...

Pope Francis has three courses of actions: Canonise Pell for lying brilliantly with amazing footwork between the canvas-of-not-remembering and the double vault-of-not-having-been-told of criminal activities of priests HE HAD TO MOVE IMPERATIVELY from parish to parish. Second: sack him into retirement or Third: let Pell carry on in ignominious ignorance of his responsibilities, back then in Victoria, and let the devil deal with him, possibly before people start to see red...

Sexual abuse survivors say it "beggars belief" Cardinal George Pell was not interested in the crimes of notorious paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale.

• Cardinal Pell tells sex abuse royal commission allegations against paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale were "not of much interest" to him at the time
• Denies he had timely knowledge of Ridsdale's offending, but that his superiors did
• Survivors say Pell's statements "beggar belief"

Cardinal Pell today faced the royal commission into child sex abuse for a second time and said Ridsdale's crimes were a "sad story" but were "not of much interest" to him at the time.

"The suffering, of course, was real, and I very much regret that, but I had no reason to turn my mind to the extent of the evils that Ridsdale had perpetrated," Cardinal Pell said via video link from Rome.

Survivors said they were taken aback by Cardinal Pell's comments.

"It beggars belief that he could have said he wasn't interested in hearing about the crimes of my uncle," abuse survivor and Ridsdale's nephew David Ridsdale said.

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-01/george-pells-gerald-ridsdale-testimony-beggars-belief-survivors/7209700

From David Marr

Here’s my theory. George Pell returned to Ballarat as a young priest with big plans. And why not? He’d gone from Rome to Oxford, where he reckons he was the first Catholic priest to earn a doctorate of philosophy since the Reformation.

Pell is seeing out his career as cardinal in charge of the Vatican’s finances. But what would have happened to his mighty career if early on he had crossed those bishops?

Had young Pell made it his business to find why the paedophile Father Gerald Ridsdale was being shifted from parish to parish in the 1970s – in later years by a committee on which he himself sat – he might well be living the twilight years of his career not in Rome but the seaside parish of Warrnambool.

From Pell’s evidence on the second day of his Roman cross-examination there emerged a picture of an ambitious and capable young priest who decided, early on, to steer clear of this dangerous issue.

On Monday Pell admitted knowing bits and pieces about some of the offenders and some of their crimes in Ballarat. He earned credibility for that. But on Tuesday he swore blind he knew nothing about the worst of them all: Ridsdale.

Fellow priests who knew the truth told him nothing. Complaints rife in several parishes never reached him. And his bishop, Ronald Mulkearns, never let him know about the complaints of Ridsdale’s abuse he had been fielding for a decade.

Pell called Mulkearns’ silence “a gross deception”.

But the devastating admission drawn from Pell by Gail Furness SC, counsel assisting the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse, was that he never bothered to ask.

“It was a sad story and of not much interest to me,” he told the commission. By the late 1970s he was a busy priest running the Catholic Institute of Education. “I had no reason to turn my mind to the evils Ridsdale had perpetrated.”

Except that he still sat on the committee moving Ridsdale around Ballarat, leaving – as he admits now – fresh victims behind every time and finding new ones in every new parish.

“It could have been the man was perpetually restless,” ventured the cardinal.

Furness was lethal. The commission’s chair, Peter McClellan, joined her in a brutal tag team. Pell reeled, blustered and hectored. At times McClellan gave the impression of a man on the point of explosion.

Pell lectured the commission on canon law. His point? To explain the power of the hierarchy, the authority of bishops and the lowly place of priests in that pecking order. He heaped all the blame on Mulkearns.

Furness was unimpressed. Priests, assistant priests, episcopal advisers and several members of that Ballarat committee on which Pell sat all knew the truth about Ridsdale and didn’t act. Wasn’t the failure in Ballarat a general failure?

“That is a vast and misleading statement,” snapped Pell.

Furness and McClellan homed in on the responsibility of individual priests like him: if bishop didn’t act to save children, weren’t priests compelled to act?

Pell insisted a priest’s responsibility, while never nil, depended on their place in the hierarchy. Bishops remain in charge. So what does a priest do who is worried by the inaction of his bishop? Write to the Papal Nuncio.

There was laughter in the Sydney hearing room through much of this. Muffled crowd noises were coming down the line from Rome.

Was I alone in wishing Furness would ask: should they call the cops? Pell answered the question unasked. “I’m not sure at that stage there was even a civic responsibility to report such a crime.”

The cardinal was speaking from the heart. By the look of things he has failed to convince the royal commission that he did his duty by the children of Ballarat. But he has surely convinced them of his loyalty to the hierarchical church.

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/mar/01/george-pell-wasnt-much-interested-in-stories-of-abuse-by-priests-which-was-lucky-for-his-career

Pell's Oxford doctorate in Sergeant Shultz's philosophy: three monkeys for the price of one — see nothing, hear nothing, say nothing... Why ignorance, feigned or real, is bliss. Oh god, give me the strength not to ask questions.

Abuse survivors say they are fed up with listening to George Pell's testimony in Rome and want to take their complaints straight to Pope Francis. Cardinal Pell is facing another day of tough questioning, with the focus on why a paedophile priest who brandished a handgun was not stood down.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-02/george-pell-third-day-royal-commission-child-sexual-abuse/7212356

The new [Australian] ambassador to the Holy See told a Catholic publication that her aim was to change the Vatican’s “narrative” about Australia away from the child abuse royal commission and cardinal George Pell – comments that have infuriated abuse survivors. 

In an interview with Catholic Health Australia in September, the newly appointed ambassador Chiara Porro spoke of a recent audience with the Pope, during which she raised the work local Catholic groups were doing on health and education.

She then said: “You know whenever people [in the Vatican] think of Australia they think immediately about cardinal Pell and the royal commission.

“So my aim here is to change that narrative.”

The comments, which have since forced a clarification from the foreign affairs minister, angered abuse survivors, who say Australia’s ambassador, as a representative of all Australians, should be raising the royal commission as often as possible to help avoid a repeat of the horrific child abuse scandal it exposed.

“Our embassy isn’t flying Australia’s flag, it’s flying the Vatican’s flag,” one survivor, who requested anonymity, said.

“The frustration is that the ambassador isn’t just sitting on the fence, but actively working to … change the narrative, to divert the attention away from the negative things that happened in the church.

“It’s so annoying to watch because the ambassador’s job is to try to fix the problems identified by the royal commission.”

The foreign affairs minister Marise Payne has since distanced the government from the ambassador’s comments.

In response to questions on notice from Labor senator Kimberley Kitching, Payne said the ambassador’s words did not reflect the position of the Australian government.

Payne said that neither she nor her department had told Porro that, upon arriving at the Vatican, her aim should be to “change that narrative” away from cardinal Pell and the royal commission.

Pell left a senior position at the Vatican in 2017 to face charges that he sexually molested two 13-year-old choir boys in the sacristy of the Melbourne cathedral in 1996. He was convicted in 2019 and sentenced to six years in prison, but the conviction was thrown out by Australia’s high court in April last year, which unanimously found there was reasonable doubt in the testimony of his lone accuser.

Porro, a career diplomat and practicing Catholic, was appointed ambassadorlast year, around the time of her half-hour meeting with Pope Francis.

She also told Catholic Health Australia that she had sought the Pope’s views on “how to engage youth, when there is such a crisis of confidence in the Catholic church, particularly in Australia” and how to go about “regaining trust and re-establishing those links”.

In the same interview, Porro acknowledged it was not her role to represent the views of the Catholic church in Australia.

She said her role was to represent “the Australian government” and “all Australians”.

“I’m here to be able to provide that bridge to the Holy See. There’s lots of erroneous reporting [about the Vatican], so where I can try to explain certain things I will.”

The department of foreign affairs and trade was approached for a further clarification of Porro’s comments.

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/may/29/australias-holy-see-ambassador-under-fire-for-saying-she-wants-to-change-narrative-away-from-george-pell

Read from top

See also: https://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/28980

Free Julian Assange please ################

The Holy See announced on Saturday that Becciu and nine others have been ordered to stand trial for alleged crimes stemming from the Vatican's purchase of a luxury property in London, as well as speculative investments that resulted in serious financial losses for the Church.

The cardinal was charged with embezzlement, abuse of office, and subordination. An Italian woman who worked for the senior Church official was also charged with embezzlement. 

Among their co-defendants are the former heads of the Vatican's financial intelligence unit, as well as two Italian brokers involved in the shady deal. Charges include extortion, fraud, and money laundering. 

Charges were also brought against four companies associated with individual defendants. Two of the firms are located in Switzerland, one in the United States, and one in Slovenia. 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/528297-vatican-indicts-cardinal-money-laundering/

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assangex