Posted on 09/27/2020 5:26:39 PM PDT by naturalman1975
On Tuesday George Pell flies back to Rome, a challenge to powerful enemies now caught in the Vatican’s worst financial scandal in decades.
Those enemies hoped Cardinal Pell, the Vatican’s former corruption buster, would rot in an Australian jail on suspiciously false charges of child sexual abuse.
But Pell returns in triumph, and it’s his nemesis, Cardinal Angelo Becciu, who could now face jail instead.
And once again, former Vatican officials ask: is there a connection to this scandal and Pell’s legal nightmare in Australia?
Pell was the Vatican’s fourth most powerful man, overseeing church finances, until Victoria Police charged him in 2017 with 26 charges of sexual abuse against nine different “victims”.
Pell stepped down and returned to Australia in July 2017 to clear his name, only to spend 405 days in jail for a crime he could not have committed.
For some at the Vatican, having Pell disappear was extremely convenient.
He’d been leading an audit of Vatican finances and uncovered extensive corruption, possibly involving even the Mafia.
Pell warned Pope Francis, adding: beware of Becciu, second in charge of the Secretariat of State.
Pell was alarmed by one of Becciu’s property deals – a luxury development in London, bought with loans from a Swiss bank with a record of violating money-laundering and fraud safeguards.
Becciu apparently tried to disguise those loans by cancelling them out against the property’s value.
Other Becciu deals also looked weird, including financial transfers to buy an Italian hospital that then collapsed, riddled with theft and fraud, leaving an astonishing $1.3 billion debt.
Becciu had even placed his niece as the secretary to the church’s representative at the hospital. He’s also accused of steering other Vatican business to his three brothers.
Becciu fought back. In 2016, he unilaterally cancelled an external audit of Vatican departments commissioned by Pell.
Pell asked the Pope to back him up, but Francis refused.
Pell was now running out of time. Victoria Police had advertised for “victims” who had been assaulted at Melbourne’s St Patrick’s Cathedral when Pell was Archbishop.
That trawling worked: alleged victims did come forward. All complaints were inherently implausible. All failed.
But one went further than the rest. A man whose name is still suppressed claimed Pell in 1996 sexually assaulted him and a fellow chorister at the same time in the Cathedral after Mass.
The story was absurd. The other supposed victim, since dead, told his parents he wasn’t abused, and the evidence showed neither Pell nor his accuser could have been at the scene of the crime at the only time it could have happened.
But this still kept Pell away from the Vatican for three years and in jail for one until the High Court in April quashed his sentence.
Becciu made use of the time. In the same month that police said they’d charge Pell, Becciu fired the Vatican’s first-ever auditor general, Libero Milone, accusing him of “spying” on him and threatening criminal charges if Milone didn’t go quietly.
But now Pell is free and Becciu has fallen.
Becciu, who’d become head of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, was last week forced to resign over financial irregularities.
The Pope said Becciu also resigned his rights as a Cardinal, apparently including the right to vote.
This last time a Cardinal was demoted like this was in 2015, when Scotland’s Keith O’Brien was punished for sexually harassing young priests.
Becciu last week vowed to prove his innocence, but now Pell returns, ostensibly to empty his Vatican apartment.
The Pope has not offered him a job, but many cardinals think Pell may have been right and the Pope should have backed him.
The Pope’s authority has been rocked, and it would make sense to show he’s serious about fighting corruption by giving Pell some role.
Pell, though, does not seem keen on any big job. He’s 79, and told me recently his only ambition now is to plant roses.
All he’s said publicly about Becciu’s sacking is that the Pope was “elected to clean up Vatican finances” and “is to be thanked and congratulated on recent developments”.
He added: “The cleaning of the stables continues in both the Vatican and Victoria.” He’s hinting this scandal may be linked to his persecution in Victoria.
Pell may not want any new role, but his church calls. His Pope is weak.
It is the time for all good men in the Vatican to step up. And Pell – for all the attempts to destroy him in Melbourne – is one of those good.
But it was certainly convenient for those who did not like the fact that he was trying to clean things up in Rome.
Is there a reason?
Suspicious indeed.
Certainly more so than in the US - partly because they are more ‘mainstream’ - the ‘centre’ of Australian politics is further left than the US (in American terms, I’d be considered a moderate conservative, here, I’m considered much more hardcore) - so they are bolder.
I mean, the Premier (roughly equivalent to a Governor in the US) of my state (Victoria) absolutely openly describes himself as a Socialist. So did Julia Gillard and Bob Hawke, two of our fairly recent Prime Ministers - even if they are socialists, how many American Governors or Presidents would actually openly and proudly use the term? So it’s easier for those who are even more extreme to be open about it and not feel they need to particularly hide it.
Certainly the needle is further to the Left. My question, however, was concerning extreme tactics, in this case putting a clearly innocent man of great stature in jail for years as Stalin for example did, what I would call rabidness. Even in legal defeat, the shock troops thumbed their nose by defacing the cathedral doors. In Canada, we are too “nice” for that behavior, though equally to the left.
A lot of people sincerely believed Pell was guilty - his trial was conducted in secret so most people did not know or understand the details of what he was accused of and why it was clearly impossible (which it was - logistically it just could not have happened which is why the High Court unanimously overturned the verdict). There was some reporting of the details in the media after the suppression orders were lifted, but it all had to be read at once and that made it complex - if it had been reported day by day during the trial, I do believe it would have been different - the trial verdict might have been the same, but far, far more people would have questioned it - including, to be fair, some on the left - there were definitely people from that side of politics who were saying the conviction did not seem safe to them.
But the thing is, most people, did assume the trial had got it right. And that was the reason for them supporting it, and being upset after it was overturned.
The question, to me, really is, why those who should have known better - primarily senior figures in Victoria Police - went after him. And the answer to that... what may not be clear outside Australia is that is now known that up until at least the early 1980s, Victoria Police actively held cover up genuine sexual abuse by Catholic Priests that did happen - Pell was innocent, but there were certainly Priests who weren’t, and some of them got away with it because Victoria Police helped cover things up (and Pell’s predecessor as Archbishop of Melbourne, Sir Frank Little, and the Bishop of Ballarat, Ronald Mulkearns were also clearly involved in coverups) - and the fact Victoria Police had done this had become public knowledge by about 2015 - so I think that the current leadership of the Victoria Police were looking for a high profile case so they could say “See - we do not cover things up any more.” Pell became that case for them - and it did not help that at the same time, they were being told they always had to “believe the victims”, and were under pressure from the state government as well. I am not saying police were deliberately trying to convict an innocent man - but they were being constantly pressured to assume guilt in such cases and it would have made them look good to win, so reasonable investigation turned into assumptions...
There were also some genuinely anti-Catholic journalists pushing it along, but I think actual genuine prejudice was less common than just an overreaction to past coverups and a lack of scepticism that should have existed.
Thank God, the High Court (which, by the way, is largely left leaning) still based its ruling purely on the facts and the law. The Judges there are to be commended for not letting their ideological views get in the way of justice.
The problem is, most people don’t get to appeal their case to the High Court and even if they do, they may spend months in prison beforehand as Cardinal Pell did.
The presumption of innocence applies in all common law jurisdictions to criminal cases. Reaction to previous coverups and believing the victim are irrelevant unless unless the court has a political agenda.
I certainly agree that the presumption of innocence should apply.
But that standard was *not* met in this case.
We even had the Commissioner of Police repeatedly referring to the complainants in the media as ‘victims’ before Pell was even on trial.
That is how badly this was handled.
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