The Trial of Cardinal Pell

As many in the Catholic blogosphere are probably well aware, an Australian appellate court has dismissed Cardinal Pell's appeal of his conviction. Julia Yost, of First Things, at the New York Post, offers a stinging rebuke of the Australian legal system. For many legal experts and especially for those who know Cardinal Pell, that system has thus far been found inadequate to the task of safeguarding truth and justice.

The dissenting appellate judge noted:

(T)he sole accuser’s wholly uncorroborated testimony 'contained discrepancies, displayed inadequacies and otherwise lacked probative value.'

Probative: "having the quality or function of proving or demonstrating something; affording proof or evidence."

If that be the case, how then did the other judges arrive at their decision to dismiss Cardinal Pell's appeal? A question for legal minds.

Father Raymond De Souza, at the National Catholic Register, writes:

The charges against Cardinal Pell were so outrageous as to be utterly impossible: In his first Sunday Mass in his cathedral as the new archbishop of Melbourne, he broke away from the closing procession, hastened back to the sacristy, discovered two choirboys there whom he had never met previously, sexually assaulted them in a graphic manner while still fully vested for Mass, during which time the sacristy door was open, the cathedral was still full of people milling about, and the servers and sacristans were going back and forth from the sanctuary to the sacristies.

+ + +

*** WARNING ***

Explicit Language

Julia Yost
New York Post

By a 2-to-1 vote, an Australian appellate court this week dismissed George Cardinal Pell’s appeal of his conviction on five counts of “historic” child sexual abuse. For Pell’s supporters, the decision can hardly be surprising. Given the way things had gone, a just outcome would have come as a shock.

Prosecutors accused Pell of surprising two choirboys who were guzzling communion wine in the sacristy of the Melbourne cathedral immediately after Mass one Sunday in 1996. The cardinal was charged with forcing the boys to fellate him while he was still vested in archbishop’s robes.

The allegations were utterly implausible — for several reasons well-established by the defense at trial. [The following content has been converted into a list by the Blog editor.]

1. The cathedral’s communion wine was kept locked in a safe, for starters, and Pell couldn’t have left the post-Mass proceedings without his absence being noticed; witnesses attested this never happened. Likewise, the choirboys couldn’t have left the post-Mass proceedings without their absence being noticed; witnesses attested this never happened, either.
2. Plus, the sacristy would have been bustling with activity. As witnesses testified, Pell was never alone in the cathedral while vested for Mass but always accompanied by at least one assistant. 
3. The security arrangements and layout of the cathedral, and the respective locations of the cardinal and the choir, would have made it impossible for the abuse to occur as alleged.
4. Nor is it physically possible to expose one’s genitals while vested in an archbishop’s robes.
5. Before he died in 2014, one of the two boys denied that he had “ever been interfered with or touched up” — by anyone.

All this led 10 out of 12 jurors at Pell’s first trial to vote to acquit. Yet at the retrial, the jurors ignored the enormous weight of exculpatory evidence and voted in December to convict him amid a climate of media-driven anti-Catholic hysteria.

As the dissenting appellate judge was to conclude, the sole accuser’s wholly uncorroborated testimony “contained discrepancies, displayed inadequacies and otherwise lacked probative value.” Oh, well.

Some Catholic priests and hierarchs have abused young boys and men, in Australia and elsewhere. But the sins of a few devils in ­Roman collars don’t justify the scapegoating of an innocent man — or the campaign of misinformation and demonization carried out against him by Australia’s liberal media and legal elites.

- - -

Read the rest of the article at: https://nypost.com/2019/08/22/catholic-haters-have-just-convicted-an-innocent-cardinal/