Author: Erin Elizabeth

The former third most powerful Vatican official and Australia’s most senior Catholic official, Cardinal George Pell, has been found guilty of child sexual abuse in a Melbourne trial. The verdict was delivered on December 11 but subject to a suppression order until now, while a previous trial on the same five charges resulted in a hung jury – leading to a retrial. Pell, the Vatican’s Treasurer, was found guilty of sexually penetrating a child under the age of 16, along with four charges of an indecent act with a child under the age of 16, according to The Guardian. Pell is accused of orally raping two choir boys he caught drinking sacramental wine in a church corridor. The case against Pell centred around events of more than 22 years ago. The jury found that in the second half of December 1996, while he was archbishop of Melbourne, Pell walked in on two 13-year-old choirboys after a Sunday solemn mass at St Patrick’s Cathedral and sexually assaulted them. … After leaving the procession, the complainant said, he and the other boy snuck back into the church corridors and entered the priest’s sacristy, a place they knew they should not be. There they found some sacramental wine and began to drink. The complainant alleged that Pell had walked in on them and told them something to the effect of they were...