Even secular ("no-friend-of-the-Church") observers in Australia say it was a ginned-up media witch-hunt from the beginning. The Peronist Pope threw Pell to the wolves.
I thought as much as soon as I heard the absurd charge (and this was his third trial on the same charge, right?)
Supposedly after a Solemn High Mass, hundreds of people in the church waiting to greet Pell and shake his hand, particularly because it's his first or second SHM in the Cathedral, a Sunday in Advent --- and he leaves the Recessional Procession, hies himself over to the Sacristy, big open room, sacristans and acolytes milling about, and, wearing his alb (floor-length, no opening at the front, cinctured at the waist) AND over that, his big, flowing Gothic chasuble (similarly floor-length, no opening in the front,and heavy, brocaded --- it needs help from the MC just to get it on and off --- he goes and lifts up, or pushes aside his vestments (which can't be done) in order to ---
It's just impossible. And he does this in 6 minutes --- it was specified 6 minutes --- 20 years ago?
I'm sorry. If he did it, I hope he goes up in flames and they have to scrape his remains off the floor. But if he's innocent, whole lotta people going to Judgment over this.
St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle...
I had forgotten the particular details by I do remember the impossibility of the allegations. Thanks for filling in my blanks.