CNA Staff, Dec 21, 2020 / 04:47 pm (CNA).- Cardinal George Pell, who was acquitted this year after becoming the highest-ranking Catholic cleric ever to be convicted of sexual abuse, spoke this week about his time in prison, his hopes for the future, and his thoughts on Vatican financial reform efforts.
Pell was initially convicted in Australia in 2018 of multiple counts of sexual abuse. On April 7, 2020, Australia’s High Court overturned his six-year prison sentence. The High Court ruled that he should not have been found guilty of the charges and that the prosecution had not proven their case beyond a reasonable doubt.
Pell spent 13 months in solitary confinement, during which time he was not permitted to celebrate Mass.
The cardinal still faces a canonical investigation at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome, though after his conviction was overturned, several canonical experts said it was unlikely he would actually face a Church trial.
In a new interview with EWTN, Pell said his time in jail was difficult, but he was strengthened by many people offering prayers and sacrifices for him.
“[O]ne of the great differences between us and people without religion is that we believe in some mysterious way suffering can be turned to good. So many people wrote to me and said me they were offering their suffering for me: a young fellow who was dying, a woman wrote and said she was about to give birth and she said would offer up the pains of childbirth for me,” he said in the December 9 interview.
“I felt I could offer up my suffering for the good of the Church, for the victims [of clerical sex abuse], for my family, for my friends, and that helped,” he continued.
“And it also helps to realize that ultimately there’s one judgement that’s supremely important and that’s before the good God when you die. Now if I had thought that death was the end of everything, that the ultimately important thing was my earthly reputation, well obviously my approach would have been different.”
Pell said that although he had faced animosity in his career, the type of infamy that comes with allegations of sex abuse are extremely challenging, especially when he had to remain silent in the face of unfair reporting.
Still, the cardinal said he never despaired during his time in prison, although losing his appeal at the Victoria Supreme Court “was a very low moment.”
“I knew rationally, that my case was enormously strong, but things are not decided on rationality and that Appeal court decision in Victoria reminded me of that,” he said.
“One of the interesting things in Rome was that even my ideological enemies didn’t believe that I was guilty,” he noted. “Now one reason for that was because they knew what a Cathedral is like after a big Mass on Sunday. Many of the people in Australia, even a few of those who were helping me, think of churches as being small and empty and nobody around. But in a cathedral on Sunday, we were, you know, there were hundreds in the big Mass, 50 in the choir, 15 servers, half a dozen people in the sacristy, plus the visitors. The suggestion that I would have attacked two youngsters I didn’t know, nobody said I knew them, in such circumstances, is doubly implausible.”
In Australia, however, he said some people treated him as a scapegoat, seeing not just him but the Catholic Church more broadly on trial for sex abuse.
Pell said his time in prison was somewhat like a retreat – removed from the world and isolated from social interaction.
While there were moments where he wondered why God was allowing his suffering, he also hopes that his ordeal can bring souls to Christianity.
Pell said he is not angry looking back at his experience, but is glad to be back in Rome to thank Pope Francis for his support.
Although he is no longer prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy, as his term expired last year, he said his successor, Jesuit priest Fr. Juan Antonio Guerrero Alves is “a good man, a competent man.”
“He’s headed in the right direction and I totally support him,” Pell said. “I just hope he’s not thwarted the way I am. The Holy Father says there’s got to be an investment committee set up to manage Vatican investment. We recommended that 5 years ago. Now that’s got to be men and women by honest and really professional investors and given effective control. That’s what my successor wants and I fully support that so that we can get away from this shadowy world that the Vatican has dealt with, not all always, but so many times, for decades.”
Reflecting on his own time heading the secretariat, Pell said he “didn’t quite realize just the level of sophistication, corruption, and a good measure of incompetence that would be there.”
During his time as prefect, he discovered more than 1 billion euro in accounts that had not been declared.
Pell addressed speculations that the sex abuse allegations against him were an attempt to prevent his anti-corruption work in Vatican finances. He said that while there is evidence to support this idea, there is not proof, and more investigation is needed.
“A lot of the people who were working for serious reform here believed there was a connection. Amongst my supporters in Australia, almost nobody believed that there was a connection,” he continued. “We now know that quite a number of the criminal elements around the place hoped that I would come to grief in Australia, whether they knew more than that we don’t know.”
Some of this speculation involves media reports that Cardinal Angelo Becciu sent 700,000 euros of Vatican funds to Australia during Pell’s sexual abuse trial, possibly as a payment for Pell’s accusers.
In September, Becciu resigned as prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints and from the rights extended to members of the College of Cardinals.
He worked previously as the number two-ranking official in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State, and has been connected to an ongoing investigation of financial malfeasance at the secretariat. He had clashed with Pell over reform efforts in the Vatican.
CNA has reported that in 2015 Becciu seemed to have made an attempt to disguise the loans on Vatican balance sheets by canceling them out against the value of the property purchased in London. Senior officials at the Prefecture for the Economy said that when Pell began to demand details of the loans, Becciu called the cardinal in to the Secretariat of State for a “reprimand.”
In 2016, Becciu also canceled a planned external audit of all Vatican departments.
Asked about Becciu’s resignation, Pell said, “I hope the cleaning of the stables in both my state of Victoria and the Vatican continues.” He added that “Becciu has a right to a trial. Like everybody else, he has a right to due process. So let’s just see where we’ll go.”
Overall, Pell said he thinks the Church is doing a good job of helping sex abuse victims. He pointed to protocols aimed at prevention, reporting and investigation claims, and offering compensation and counseling to survivors.
“I think, for a long time, the Church has basically been heading in the right direction and this hasn’t been as sufficiently recognized,” he said.
Looking forward, the cardinal said he plans to write and speak, and added that “like every good Christian, I should try to prepare for a good death.”
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A starting premise in response to Michael Warsaw’s clarion call for a national Rosary crusade. Is it, for one, that Amy Barrett’s nomination meets with dead silence from the USCCB an indication New Paradigm toxicity has taken effect? That they are all [except for an exceptional one perhaps two who proclaim innocent life and condemn its murder] swimming with the fishes? Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò. A bishop. The real kind. First acclaimed for his outspoken integrity, moral courage of late is on the receiving end of harsh criticism [some in this writer’s opinion justified for his inviting schism in calling Vat II heresy as argued in a recent CWR essay by the highly credentialed theologian Fr Thomas Weinandy] some writing off the distinguished former Vatican diplomat for falling in with radical traditionalists and conspiracy crankery. For example he recently wrote in a letter addressed to the National Prayer Breakfast that the 2020 presidential election presents Americans with a biblical challenge against the demonic forces of the deep state and against the New World Order. He warned voters that warring principalities unseen to the human eye will clash on Election Day. A battle he earlier declared between the children of light and the children of darkness. The letter was not read. Whatever the complexities oddities most practicing Catholics, that is not the political, even clerical and laity nominal kind are deeply concerned. Is the Archbishop really off track on this one? EWTN Chief Exec Michael Warsaw takes the moment quite seriously calling for this national novena. There is an air of iniquity that prevails. As if Pazuzu the Prince of the Air who brings illness and death has infected Mankind. Worse than Covid. Here in the States opposition to the President is relentless, never the likes seen. Demonic in nature rabidly opposed to anything sacred in the Natural Order. Warsaw is on the mark.
A word on my comment, and what we must be as Catholics. Wisdom would have the bishops remain silent in the midst of a confirmation that will change the moral character of the Court. That is, if these were ‘ordinary’ times. Hiding in the catacombs while Catholicism is under pressure from both the political Left, and a Vatican focused on global interests will have no beneficial effect on political opponents [or Vat policy]. Nor will it likely change the course of the nomination. Rather silence will continue to undermine the loyalty of American Catholics. We’re in a continued process of the secularization of Catholicism both politically and culturally. Not only is the Catholic vote at stake. Church and Nation are. Our hierarchy, the USCCB preferably could well issue an intelligently written statement in defense of Catholics to be Catholic, correctly and prudently whether in politics or in society. Doing so with respect of Just Law that enhances religious freedom, not those that impugn that right. Similar to Justice Amy Barrett’s acceptance speech the Church could clearly define the difference between holding fast to ‘dogma’, and the exercise of jurisprudence, or simply living as Catholics within a pluralistic society. Silence didn’t help previously when our religious freedom was digressed with impunity. We have a compelling interest to assert those rights now, at this very historical moment to assure all of the legitimacy of our claim, as well as to assure the Catholic at large that the Catholic Church is indeed Catholic and supports their right to live as Catholics in every societal venue.