How Cardinal Pell rose to power, clouded by scandal

Conservatism served him well both in Vatican & Australia. When more than a dozen sexual abuse victims from Cardinal George Pell’s hometown in Australia, Ballarat, flew to Rome to meet with him last year, they carried crushing stories of pain caused by local priests, and varied demands for Vatican action.
As they spoke, the victims said, Cardinal Pell remained stiff, eyes downcast. Then Andrew Collins, whose family had been close to Cardinal Pell for years, gave him a hug. The cardinal seemed to soften and later delivered an emotional statement, promising to help. “But that never happened,” Mr. Collins said.

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-international/how-cardinal-pell-rose-to-power-clouded-by-scandal/article19196820.ece 

Child abuse victim speaks out against Cardinal Pell and Catholic Church

A Dunedin man who was sexually abused by Catholic priests in New Zealand and Australia has labelled allegations against Cardinal George Pell "disgusting".

Darryl Smith was sexually abused while attending Catholic schools in both New Zealand and Australia. He has spoken out about the allegations made against Pell, who is accused of groping boys while he was a priest in Ballarat in the 1970s.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11885026 

No stranger to child abuse scandals, cardinal now finds himself in firing line

The Pope is likely shaking the dust off a letter of resignation from one of his top men, Australian cardinal George Pell. The letter has been gathering dust in a Vatican file for just over a year - Pell submitted it, as obliged, when he turned 75 last year.

Francis, if truly committed to reassuring the faithful a reforming Church had zero tolerance for a culture of silence, or worse, a wilful and deliberate cover-up of child sex abuse, would have said a year ago, "Thank you, George", and breathed a sigh of relief.

http://www.independent.ie/world-news/australasia/no-stranger-to-child-abuse-scandals-cardinal-now-finds-himself-in-firing-line-35880377.html 

All the cardinal’s men

Abbott has not been Pell’s only conservative defender. Every part of the right wing establishment has at one time or another gone in to bat for Australia’s leading Catholic representative. Such support from the heart of the establishment explains Pell’s rapid rise to the third most senior position in the Roman Catholic world.
It’s no secret why the Liberal Party has been so fond of him. If the Church of England was once described as the British Conservative party at prayer, George Pell has been the unofficial spiritual representative of the Australian Liberals.

https://redflag.org.au/node/5886 

Archbishop Philip Wilson will face a two-week hearing in November on a conceal crime charge

ARCHBISHOP Philip Wilson – the most senior Catholic cleric in the world to be charged with concealing the child sex offences of another priest – will face a two-week hearing in November.
Newcastle Local Court magistrate Ian Cheetham confirmed the November 27 special fixture hearing at Newcastle during a brief mention on Friday. The matter is expected to be heard by a Hunter magistrate brought in for the hearing.

http://www.theherald.com.au/story/4763390/november-hearing-for-archbishop/ 

Church Fear Of Scandal Hurts Abuse Victims In New York And Elsewhere

This week, Cardinal George Pell, a high-ranking Vatican official, was summoned to his native Australia to face criminal charges for what was termed “historical child abuse.”

The police have not disclosed any details about the abuse or when it occurred. But a recent book recounted the story of an altar boy who came forward to charge abuse in 2014. The alleged incident took place sometime between 1996 and 2001.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/church-fear-of-scandal-hurts-abuse-victims-in-new-york_us_5957b78ae4b0f078efd98a54 

Pope Francis’s toleration of sexually abusive clergy leaves a stain

POPE FRANCIS, who pledged a policy of “zero tolerance” for sexually abusive clergy in the Catholic Church, has turned out to be all too tolerant. On Thursday, Australian police brought criminal charges against Cardinal George Pell, a top Vatican official and kitchen- cabinet adviser to the pope, for multiple alleged incidents of sexual assault.

The charges against Cardinal Pell, the Vatican’s finance chief and the pope’s hand-picked agent of administrative reform, shook the Holy See, notwithstanding long-standing allegations that he ignored, dismissed and excused cases of sexual misconduct during his pre-Vatican years as a priest and church official in Australia. That included the crimes of a notorious pedophile priest with whom Cardinal Pell shared a house for two years in the 1970s.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/pope-franciss-toleration-of-sexually-abusive-clergy-leaves-a-stain/2017/07/02/6245787c-5d13-11e7-9b7d-14576dc0f39d_story.html?utm_term=.8b6836747f64 

Priest charged with sexually abusing 10-year-old boy

A Catholic priest from Westmoreland County has been criminally charged for sexually assaulting a 10-year-old boy.
The arrest on Monday of the Rev. John T. Sweeney, of Greensburg, marks the latest crackdown on clergy sex abuse in Pennsylvania and is part of a broader ongoing investigation by the state Attorney General's office into additional allegations of abuse by priest.
Sweeney was arrested Monday afternoon and charged with involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, a first-degree felony.

http://www.pennlive.com/news/2017/07/priest_sex_abuse_arrest_shapir.html

Pell charges throw papacy into crisis

Pope Francis is facing the biggest crisis of his papacy after the third highest ranking official in the Vatican, Cardinal George Pell, was accused of sexual abuse charges. Australian police announced on Thursday that charges relating to multiple alleged sexual offences were served on Pell’s legal representatives in Melbourne and that he had been ordered to appear in court on 18 July. Pell said he was innocent of the charges and that he was taking leave of absence to return to Australia to “clear his name”. In a statement Pell said he was the victim of a witch hunt and long-running “relentless character assassination”.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/jun/30/morning-mail-pell-charges-throw-papacy-into-crisis 

Are Catholic Clergy more Likely to Be Paedophiles than the General Public?

This is a question that has been kicking around ever since the child sex abuse scandal involving the Catholic church came to the fore. In around 2010, loads of articles came out, citing some data, that the priesthood was broadly in line with national averages, some people claimed it was actually worse in Protestant churches/organisations, and many claiming (as a result) that this was not a Catholic problem per se, and that other denominations rate the same.

The reality could be, as Andrew Brown surmised, that the notoriety of the scandal and public perception might be skewed because of the institutional cover-up of the Catholic church. Let’s have a brief look.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/tippling/2017/06/30/catholic-clergy-likely-paedophiles-general-public/ 

The photo George Pell lived to regret:

The photograph was striking. There was George Pell, then an auxiliary bishop, walking side-by-side into court with Gerald Ridsdale, the man later found to be Australia's worst paedophile priest.

The decision by Cardinal Pell, now a Vatican cardinal, to support his former housemate that day in 1993 led to an image that has lived on in infamy in Australia for more than two decades, creating an image of a man who appeared to be more concerned with protecting the church than its flock.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4653312/George-Pell-photo-paedophile-plagued-career.html