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Former Melbourne cathedral workers doubt Pell abuse could have occurred

November 6, 2019 CNA Daily News 2

Melbourne, Australia, Nov 6, 2019 / 07:00 am (CNA).- Two former employees of the cathedral school in Melbourne, Australia are expressing strong doubts about the charges that landed Cardinal George Pell— the most senior member of the hierarchy ever convicted of sexual abuse— in prison.

The former employees, Lil Sinozic and Jean Corish, have also expressed disappointment that Pell’s defence team did not call them as witnesses in the trial.

Pell, 78, was convicted of exposing himself and forcing two choir boys to commit sex acts while fully vested in his Sunday Mass garb, almost immediately after Mass in the priests’ sacristy at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in 1996. Pell was at that time Archbishop of Melbourne.

He was also convicted of fondling one of the boys in a corridor in 1997.

Pell has maintained his innocence, with his defense making central the argument that the alleged crimes would have been, under the circumstances, “simply impossible.”

Both Cornish and Sinozic were on duty nearly every Sunday morning at the cathedral in late 1996. 

Sinozic, a former teacher and executive assistant to then Father— now Monsignor— Charles Portelli, who was Pell’s master of ceremonies, echoed the defense, insisting that the circumstances of the alleged crimes as presented to the jury simply did not add up.

“I just know for a fact that what they’re describing could not have happened, given the situation in the sacristy after Mass…to say that there was this five minute interval where these acts were performed, and nobody saw or heard anything is ridiculous. I don’t know why the jury was led to believe otherwise,” she told CNA in an interview. 

Pell was convicted Dec. 11, 2018 on five charges of sexual abuse. CNA reported last year that his initial trial, bound by a gag order, ended in a mistrial; this fact was confirmed by one of the judges in the Aug. 21 proceeding.

The prosecution rested on the testimony of one of the alleged victims— the one reported to have suffered two instances of abuse by Pell. The other victim died in 2014 and was unable to testify, but had in 2001 denied to his mother that any abuse occurred while he was a member of the choir.

Although Sinozic was not present on the date of the alleged incidents, she said she was very familiar with the Sunday Mass routine within the cathedral, and the behavior of the people involved.

“Normally the archbishop would go out the front of the cathedral, and he would spend at least half an hour, if not an hour, meeting and greeting people,” she said.

“Particularly at that time, when he was new, everyone was curious about him and wanted to get to know him. So he would have spent quite a good deal of time out front just chatting to people. And then he was always followed by his entourage; he would have had his master of ceremonies, other people hanging on, and the sacristy was always busy as a beehive after Mass, as you might imagine.”

She also pointed out that Cornish, her colleague, would have been patrolling the area where the alleged incident occurred “all the time” because there was a problem with tourists coming in near the sacristy, and walking into the cathedral during Mass.

Though Cornish told CNA that her recollections of the months of Oct. 1996 to Christmas 1996 are “sketchy to say the least,” she confirmed Sinozic’s view that it would be highly unlikely for the archbishop to be totally alone minutes after the end of Mass.

“It could be up to an hour after the end of Mass before the area was clear of people who were in all the areas mentioned by the accuser, including the priests sacristy which was the busiest of all the sacristies at that time,” Cornish said in an emailed response to CNA’s questions.

Cornish is the former principal of Good Shepherd Catholic school in Melbourne. She said her office at the time in 1996 was in the presbytery, which was connected to the cathedral.

The archbishop had asked her to be the lead staffer for the forthcoming centenary celebrations of St Patrick’s Cathedral in addition to her regular job as the school principal.

She said the archbishop would always spend a great deal of time shaking hands and greeting people after Mass, even as protestors sometimes made their presence known with placards, shouting slogans like as “Pell go to hell” and ”We will get you Pell no matter what.”

Cornish also said she was in the habit of observing the activities and movement of people in the cathedral’s sacristy area.

“This was something I had learned to do even in the short 2 months I had been there, as the main sacristy corridor door was open to allow the altar servers, the assistant sacristan, Ralph [now deceased] and Alan the florist as well as others who attended to the sanctuary and sacred vessels to access the area freely.”

Cornish said she believes that the area where the abuse allegedly occurred was the “busiest and most open” of the sacristy areas, and reiterated that Pell was never alone before, during, or after a Sunday Mass.

To get to the vesting room, which did not have its own door, one would have had to go through the main sacristy, Sinozic said. She said the altar boys, who allegedly were drinking communion wine in the room where the alleged abuse occurred, would have had to go through several doors to get to the vesting room.

If the boys made their way back there, she said she finds it hard to believe that no one saw them.

“George is too smart to do something so stupid. Why would he do something like that? Knowing that anyone could walk in any second,” she commented. 

Someone would have asked what they were doing, Sinozic said, particularly an hour after Mass when all the other boys would have gone home, and their parents would be wondering where they were.

In addition, the cathedral had an evening Mass, so additional people would have already been in the cathedral preparing, she said. Cornish agreed, adding that it was “quite a major undertaking” to get the church ready again after a large concelebrated Mass.

“And they never mentioned anything for 22 years…why all of a sudden?” Sinozic wondered.

The incident is alleged to have occured when Pell was fully vested for Mass. Sinozic expressed doubt that one of the boys would not have run away while the abuse was taking place, or at least called out to the other people that would have surely been in the area.

Court documents report that “the two boys made some objections but did not quite yell. They were sobbing, in shock, and whimpering. During the offending, Cardinal Pell told them to be quiet, trying to stop them from crying.”

The Court of Appeals in Victoria upheld Pell’s conviction last summer. After an appellate panel announced its decision at a court proceeding Aug. 21, the cardinal was returned to prison. The Chief Justice ruled that Pell will be eligible to apply for parole after he has served three years and eight months of his six year sentence.

Pell has been held in solitary confinement, and is not permitted to celebrate Mass in prison. He has recently obtained a prison job weeding a courtyard.

Cornish said Paul Galbally, Pell’s solicitor, contacted her prior to his first trial, and they talked at length and then again later. She said she had to think through the dates at first, and then called him and told him she was not actually in an office in the sacristies at that time, but later had a full-time job and an office diagonally across the corridor from the archbishop’s sacristy. 

“I think Paul did not think my testimony would be helpful,” she said.

Sinozic also spoke to Pell’s solicitor at the beginning of the trial, but says she was never contacted after that. She said she’d agreed to testify, but said she suspects that she was not called as a witness because she wasn’t there on those actual dates.

“I think maybe they thought it wasn’t necessary, but I thought it would have given the jury a different perspective of the man if two laypeople got up, particularly women, and particularly teachers,” she commented.

“We know how to spot children who are out of place, because we did yard duty for many years and we can tell if something’s amiss. And we would have given a different side of view for the jury to perhaps reflect on. Because they were saying it’s just priests sticking up for each other— a men’s club.”

Cornish echoed Sinozic, saying that both of them dealt with every aspect of cathedral life, with Lil having been a vice principal and Jean having been a principal of a school of 1,000 children, and having dealt with pedophile cases before.

“I just think that Lillian Sinozic and I would have perhaps been able to give an overall picture long term of the workings of the cathedral from a female perspective…However I accept that at the time the lawyers probably thought we could not add anything to the picture.”

Pell’s attorneys did not respond to a CNA request for comment.

Pell’s appeal was presented on three grounds, two of which were procedural and dismissed by all three appeal judges.

The judges were divided on Pell’s primary ground of appeal, that the decision of the jury was “unreasonable.”

At particular issue was the question of whether the jury which convicted Pell had properly weighed all of the evidence presented in his defense, or reached the determination of guilt despite the demonstration of clear “reasonable doubt” that he committed the crimes with which he was charged.

Chief Justice Anne Ferguson and Court President Chris Maxwell formed the majority in favor of rejecting Pell’s appeal that the jury verdict was unreasonable on the evidence presented, finding that it was open to the jury to find beyond “reasonable doubt about the truth of the complainant’s account.”

In an extensive dissent from the majority finding, Justice Mark Weinberg noted that the entirety of the evidence against Pell consisted of the testimony of a single accuser, whereas more than 20 witnesses were produced to testify against his narrative.

Pell will appeal his conviction to the Australian High Court, exercising his last legal avenue to overturn his conviction.

“Pell comes across on TV as a bit arrogant and cold, but that’s not what he’s really like,” Sinozic said.

“And people get the wrong idea of him and just dislike him for some reason. So they were happy to blame him and use him as a scapegoat for all the other people that did something.”

Cornish also defended Pell’s character.

“Nothing will convince me that the Cardinal was capable or had tendencies towards committing this crime. A finer, more upstanding man I have never met,” she said.

“He is a man of black and white. He says what he believes, always taught what is right and is no man’s fool…He is a family man, equally at home in the presence of women, men and children.”

 

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Tokyo archbishop: It is ‘difficult to find success’ on evangelization in Japan

November 4, 2019 CNA Daily News 2

Tokyo, Japan, Nov 4, 2019 / 05:05 pm (CNA).- Efforts by the Catholic Church to evangelize the Japanese population have frequently collided with roadblocks, according to Archbishop of Tokyo Isao Kikuchi, but the Church is still finding some ways to proclaim the Gospel.

The archbishop answered question from Catholic News Agency on Japan, evangelization, and why breaking through into mainstream Japanese society is so difficult for a religion that has survived persecution and genocide in the country since 1549.

The interview came just weeks before Pope Francis visits the country Nov. 23-26.

“In Japanese society, it is difficult to find tangible success in missionary activities.”

According to the most recent available data, approximately 35% of Japanese claim Buddhism as their religion, while around 3-4% claim an adherence to Shinto or associated Japanese folk religions. Only 1-2% of Japanese claim Christianity as their faith, and only around half of Japanese Christians are Catholic.

“In the past, foreign missionaries succeeded in opening classrooms, gathering the people through English and cultural classes. However, these have been replaced by the initiatives of business enterprises.”

Foreign language education proved to be a powerful tool for cross-cultural pollination after World War II. It was demanded for high-paying positions in international business and politics, and only natively spoken by a fraction of a percentage of the population.

However, English education has since become compulsory in most schools. English classes often start at first grade or even earlier and continue through high school.

Additionally, Japan is now overflowing with foreign-language cram schools known as eikaiwa.

Eikaiwa are staffed with foreigners, taught cheaply, and often stick to approved conversations and lessons. Their wages are not high, and they can be quite expensive for customers. There have been multiple scandals in Japan regarding national chains of eikaiwa withholding wages, cancelling contracts without notice, and generally mistreating their employees.

Combined with the increase in mandatory English education, eikaiwa have largely killed the community, amateur foreign language class, once a staple of Catholic missionary activity.

According to the archbishop, the country’s nominally Catholic schools are beginning to abandon the idea of cultural education through language instruction.

“Catholic school may be the place to meet many young people, but unfortunately, except for some, it has not become a place for missionary activities,” said Archbishop Kikuchi.

Schools have historically been seen as Catholicism’s last strong foothold in evangelizing to the Japanese. While parishes shrink with the rest of the population and clergy shortages are becoming more and more of a problem, the prestige of the Catholic high school and Catholic university have endured and even strengthened in Japan since as far back as the Meiji Reformation.

Once highly-regarded for their access to Western-style education and foreign-born instructors in a time that the country was just beginning to interact with the outside world, Catholic universities are still greatly respected today.

Sophia University is known as one of the best private universities in the nation, one of a handful of institutions that rival the National Universities, Japan’s equivalent to the Ivy League.

However, Archbishop Kikuchi says that this ongoing prestige has come with a hefty cost.

“While the schools should be independent from national politics, unfortunately they are tied up with subsidies from the country, and thus they are gradually losing their uniqueness, with only the name ‘Catholic’ remaining,” he said.

“Many priests, religious and the laity are completely losing their involvement with them.”

The Church in Japan has also spent time in recent years engaged in disaster relief projects.

“Immediately after the Great East Japan Earthquake on 11th March 2011, support activities by the Church which continues to date through the eight volunteer centers set up in the affected areas, has been widely accepted, and serve as a witness to the Gospel through works of mercy.”

Through these efforts, the archbishop says, “the Church gives priority to witnessing the Gospel in a visible way through these steadfast works of mercy. Certainly, these activities may not lead immediately to the reception of baptism, but there is hope that many people who were touched by the spirit of the Gospel would actually be led to the Church.”

The second most powerful evangelization tool, Kikuchi says, is the Catholics population that have come and made their lives in Japan from abroad.

“Secondly, the Gospel is preached through the presence of Catholics from abroad who have come to Japan. In particular, those who have settled in marriage and built their homes in the rural areas make it possible for the Gospel to be brought in areas where the Church had never had an opportunity to get involved.”

Immigrants from the Philippines make up a large portion of the incoming foreigners in recent years. Filipinos are being tapped for jobs as English educators in eikaiwa, kindergartens, assistant-teaching positions, and more.

They are the fourth largest foreign community in Japan. It is estimated that close to 250,000 Filipinos live and work across Japan.

The Philippines’ population is close to 90% Christian – 86% is specifically Catholic.

Filipinos and their families make up large portions of the laity in Japan, attending masses and integrating into religious communities in both rural and urban areas.

“Therefore, an important task that must be given priority is to encourage foreign nationals who have settled in Japan to become aware of their missionary vocation as Catholics.”

Kikuchi believes it’s up to the clergy to instill in foreigners this sense of missionary spirituality.

“Pastoral care for foreign nationals in the Japanese church is not merely a service to welcome [guests], but rather a duty to make them aware of their vocation as missionaries.”

 

 

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Australia proposes face-recognition program to fight underage porn access

October 28, 2019 CNA Daily News 0

Canberra, Australia, Oct 28, 2019 / 06:34 pm (CNA).- A government department in Australia has proposed the use of a face recognition system to curb underage access to online pornography, but the idea has been met with concerns over privacy.

The Department of Home Affairs wrote to a House of Representatives Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs that it could offer a “suite of identity-matching services,” reported business tech news site ZDNet this week.

Among possible uses for this technology, the department emphasized the use of a face verification service to restrict teens and children from accessing online pornography. The system would match people’s faces with their identification document in government records.

Current efforts to verify users’ age on pornographic websites include requiring users to enter a date of birth or upload identification documents. However, the Home Affairs department said, these methods can be easily circumvented by minors entering a parent’s driver’s license information.

An identity-matching service would provide a more reliable method of age verification, and could also be used for other age-restricted online activities, such as gambling, it said.

“Whilst they are primarily designed to prevent identity crime, Home Affairs would support the increased use of the Document and Face Verification Services across the Australian economy to strengthen age verification processes,” said the Department of Home Affairs, according to ZDNet.

Before the program takes place, a piece of biometric legislation – the Identity-matching Services Bill 2019 – must first be approved by parliament. However, last week, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security demanded the entire bill be redrafted.

The committee expressed concern that the bill would allow the Department of Home Affairs to have too much surveillance power. It said the bill should be rewritten with a focus on “privacy, transparency and subject to robust safeguards,” the Guardian reported.

“In the committee’s view, robust safeguards and appropriate oversight mechanisms should be explained clearly in the legislation,” said Committee Chair Andrew Hastie, according to the Guardian.

The United Kingdom also tried to implement an age verification system, which would have required porn users to verify their age by entering their credit card information or purchasing a temporary porn pass. The program was originally scheduled to go into effect in April 2018, but encountered numerous technical problems and objections from critics who were concerned about privacy violations. After its implementation was delayed numerous times, the program was officially dropped on Oct. 16.

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Indian nun dismissed from religious life for disobedience appeals to Signatura

October 28, 2019 CNA Daily News 0

Kochi, India, Oct 28, 2019 / 06:01 pm (CNA).- Sister Lucy Kalapura, whose dismissal from religious life was upheld by the Congregation for the Oriental Churches last month, has sent a letter asking that her case be further appealed before the Aposotolic Signatura.

She was dismissed from the Franciscan Clarist Congregation in August for several acts of disobedience, including a protest of the handling of another nun’s accusation that Bishop Mulakkal of Jullundur serially raped her.

“I am deeply obliged for providing me the opportunity for a further appeal to the Supreme Tribunal of the Signatura Apostolica. It is desired, in this connection, that an opportunity be granted to me to appear in person before the Tribunal to enable me to present to its honourable members my side of the situation,” Sister Lucy wrote in an Oct. 25 letter to Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, prefect of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches.

She also asked that she be able to present her case to Pope Francis.

According to the FCC, Sr. Lucy has led a life against the principles of religious life by disobeying a transfer order, publishing poems after having been denied permission to do so, buying a vehicle, withholding her salary from the congregation, and participating in a protest against Bishop Mulakkal, who has been charged with several instances of raping a nun of a different congregation.

Bishop Mulakkal was charged with rape in April, and his trial is due to begin Nov. 11. A nun of the Missionaries of Jesus alleged that the bishop sexually abused her more than a dozen times over two years.

In her letter to Cardinal Sandri, Sr. Lucy said, according to News 18, that “what purports to be ‘disciplinary action’, and what in reality are reprisals, against me commenced only after I stood by the sisters of the Missionaries of Jesus in their efforts to secure justice for the outraged nun.”

“I wish to urge strenuously that the actions initiated against me, and the vindictiveness it reeks of, cannot be understood aright, if they are seen in isolation from the Franco Mulakkal matter as the trigger,” she added.

Sr. Lucy wrote that she is “a collateral victim of this Franco Mulakkal scandal, in regard to which the mettle of the Church’s commitment to truth and justice is being tested in full public view.”

She charged that “it does not have to be argued that the Holy See being made to be seen as partisan in this case, or as hostile to justice being available to a rape victim, is sure to discredit the witness and integrity of the Catholic Church for the years to come.”
The community’s superior general, Sr. Ann Joseph, wrote in August that Sr. Lucy “did not show the needed remorse and you failed to give a satisfactory explanation for your lifestyle in violation of the proper law of the FCC.”
Sr. Lucy said that the FCC’s charges of disobedience are a “deliberate attempt to paint her in bad light”.
In a January letter of warning sent to Sr. Lucy, Sr. Ann wrote that the nun had joined a protest regarding Bishop Mulakkal “without the permission of your superior. You have published articles in some non-Christian newspapers and weeklies … gave interviews to ‘Samayam’ without seeking permission from the provincial superior. Through Facebook, channel discussions and the articles, you belittled the Catholic leadership by making false accusations against it and tried to bring down the sacraments. You tried to defame FCC also. Your performance through social media as a religious sister was culpable, arising grave scandal.”

The letter also said Sr. Lucy failed to obey a transfer order given her in 2015 by her provincial superior, and that she published a book of poems despite being denied permission to do so, and used 50,000 Indian rupees ($700) from the congregation’s account “without proper permission” to do so.

Sr. Lucy is also accused of buying a car for about $5,670 and learning to drive without permission, and failing to entrust her salary from December 2017.

Sr. Ann called these acts “a grave infringement of the vow of poverty.”
The superior general added that Sr. Lucy has been corrected and warned several times by her provincial over her “improper behaviour and violations of religious discipline.”

“Instead of correcting yourself, you are simply denying the allegations against you stating that you have to live your own beliefs, ideologies and conviction. You are repeatedly violating the vows of obedience and poverty. The evangelization and social work you do should be according to the FCC values, principles and rules. The present mode of your life is a grave violation of the profession you have made,” Sr. Ann wrote.

After the denial of Sr. Lucy’s initial appeal was communicated to her earlier this month, she told the BBC that “I don’t see any point” in further recourse to the Apostolic Signatura, “since they have made up their mind.”

She maintained: “I am not going to leave the convent. The lifestyle I lead is as per the rules and regulations.”

Sr. Lucy was sent a series of warnings from January through March. The first asked that she appear before Sr. Ann to explain her disobediences, or face expulsion from the congregation.

In January Sr. Lucy said that the congregation was trying to silence her, and denied any wrongdoing.

In May the FCC’s General Council voted unanimously to dismiss Sr. Lucy.

Another nun of the FCC, Sister Lissy Vadakkel, was transferred earlier this year from Muvattupuzha to Vijawada.

Sister Alphonas Abraham, superior of the FCC’s Nirmala Province, said in February that Sr. Lissy’s transfer was unrelated to her acting as a witness in the case against Bishop Mulakkal.

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