Dilip Simeon's blog

This is the portrait of a deceitful man. We have waited over two and a half years but now we can read the unflinching verdict reached by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on Cardinal  George Pell . With its last findings made public, it’s clear that no senior figure in any church who gave evidence to the commission has emerged as damaged as Pell. Tolling through those hitherto secret pages is the underlying verdict of the commission: that Pell might have, but did not, take action to protect the children of the Catholic community he served as a priest in Ballarat and bishop in  Melbourne . Pell’s excuses for doing so little are dissected forensically and rejected one by one. The commissioners condemn key claims in the cardinal’s evidence as implausible, inconceivable, untenable and unacceptable. More posts on  George Pell The clamour around the royal commission has long died down. It’s two and a half years since it produ...

Cardinal  George Pell , the former financial controller of the Vatican and the most senior Catholic in the world to have been found guilty of historical child sexual abuse, will be freed from prison and have his convictions overturned following a two-year legal battle. The bench of the high court in Brisbane on Tuesday granted leave for Pell to appeal, ordering his immediate release and quashing the conviction. Pell's accuser issues rallying cry to sexual abuse survivors in wake of verdict More posts on George Pell The high court found that the jury, acting rationally on the whole of the evidence, ought to have entertained a doubt as to Pell’s guilt with respect to each of the offences for which he was convicted, and ordered that the convictions be quashed and that verdicts of acquittal be entered in their place.  In other words, it was not enough that the jurors found the witness believable, compelling and honest.  The other evidence should have called his ac...

Cardinal  George Pell , once the third most powerful man in the Vatican and Australia’s most senior Catholic, has been found guilty of child sexual abuse after a trial in Melbourne. A jury delivered the unanimous verdict on 11 December in Melbourne’s county court, but the result was  subject to a suppression order and could not be reported until  now.  A previous trial on the same five charges, which began in August, resulted in a hung jury, leading to a retrial. Pell, who is on leave from his role in Rome as Vatican treasurer,  was found guilty  of sexually penetrating a child under the age of 16 as well as four charges of an indecent act with a child under the age of 16. The offences occurred in December 1996 and early 1997 at St Patrick’s Cathedral, months after Pell was inaugurated as archbishop of Melbourne. Brutal and dogmatic, George Pell waged war on sex – even as he abused children He is due to be sentenced next week but may be taken i...

Shame and fear of sex and the body – and the hypocrisy and perversion that arises from this – have compromised Catholicism for centuries. When I observe this tragic mess, when I truly look at the face of George Pell, I don’t see a monster and I don’t see an ogre and I don’t see Satan and I don’t see the Devil. I see the children and the women and the men and the nuns and the priests who have been destroyed by this shame, and this fear, and this living of lies... It is long past the time for the church to grow up. Yet in acknowledging the horror I don’t want to forget the many Catholics I have met who have remained true to what I believe is the most profound of Jesus’s teachings. I am thinking of the Catholic nurses I met during the worst years of the Aids epidemic, who cared for sick and dying friends even when their church had seemingly turned its back on the ill. During the height of the economic rationalist slashing of social services by Premier Jeff Kennett in Vic...