Cardinal Pell Has One Question for Cardinal Becciu: ‘Will He Just Tell Us What the Money Was Sent for?’

The National Catholic Register ^ | 12/16/21 | Joan Frawley Desmond

[marshmallow]

The former prefect of the Vatican’s Secretariat for the Economy sat down for an interview on his three-volume 'Prison Journal' touching on his incarceration, Cardinal Becciu and Vatican finances.

When Cardinal George Pell took a leave of absence in 2018 from his post as the inaugural prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy and returned to Australia to stand trial for his “historic sexual abuse” case, he was the highest ranking Church official to be swept up in a decades-long global scandal that has shattered victims and wreaked havoc on the Church’s moral credibility.

Convicted in 2018, he would spend 402 days in prison, mostly in solitary confinement, before his guilty verdict was overturned by Australia’s highest court in 2020.

During his incarceration, the former archbishop of Melbourne from 1996-2001 and of Sydney from 2001–2014 was barred from celebrating the Mass, forcing him to dig deep into his faith and prayer life. He was heartened, however, by the steady flow of letters from friends and well-wishers who offered prayers, spiritual counsel and reading materials.

While working with his lawyers to appeal his conviction, the cardinal began a journal, chronicling the sudden constraints placed on his daily routine, reflections on Holy Scripture, and reactions to unfolding events in Rome, including evidence of the Holy See’s problematic real estate investments in London.

The subsequent revelations of high-level financial corruption, leading to an ongoing Vatican trial, also raised questions about whether curial officials who had opposed the cardinal’s insistence on an external audit of all Vatican finances, helped to bring his case to trial in the first place. At issue: 2.3 million in Australian dollars ($1.65 million) worth of Vatican funds sent to Australia that have yet to be accounted for.

[ClearCase_guy]

The Church really isn’t that into confession and repentance. They like the sin. They enjoy the sin. They want the good times to keep rolling.