Cardinal Pell The former head of the Vatican’s finances, who spent 405 days in jail before the quashing of his child sexual abuse convictions, has said that “God-fearers” were better able to deal with evil and suffering than atheists.
In an Easter message Cardinal George Pell, 78, said he knew that God was with him throughout his ordeal and that “a fundamental difference between God-fearers and secularists today is found in the approach to suffering…I have just spent 405 days in jail for a crime I didn’t commit.”
He also sharply criticised the Church for the way it dealt with the “cancer” of clerical child sexual abuse.
The clergyman, who was released from prison last week after Australia’s High Court quashed five convictions of assault on two choirboys in the 1990s, asked why there was “so much evil and suffering?” In a column titled ‘In the suffering, we find redemption’ published in The Australian, he said: “There are two levels [of disappointment]. One is the crimes itself…and then treating it so inadequately for so long”.
He added: “I knew God was with me, but I didn’t know what he was up to, although I realised He has left all of us free.
“But with every blow it was a consolation to know I could offer it to God for some good purpose like turning the Mass of suffering into spiritual energy.”
The Australian Cardinal spoke of the scourge of child abuse in the Church and how the many failures to act still haunt him today.
“From many points of view the crisis is also bad for the Catholic Church, but we have painfully cut out a moral cancer and this is good,” he said.
“I totally condemn those sorts of activities, and the damage that it’s done to people.
“One of the things that grieves me is the suggestion that I’m anti-victim, or not sufficiently sympathetic,” he said.
The prelate went on to speak of several inmates he befriended, including a convicted murderer, as well as witnessing the devastation caused by addiction to “ice”, or crystal methamphetamine, on fellow prisoners.
Victoria police originally charged Cardinal Pell after a man, known as Witness J, came forward in 2014 alleging he and another choirboy were abused at St Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne in 1996.
Conviction
Witness J, now in his 30s, said he had felt compelled to come forward after the death of the other choirboy.
Cardinal Pell was convicted by a jury in December 2018. An earlier jury was unable to reach a verdict. He appealed his conviction, first unsuccessfully in Victoria’s Court of Appeal, but then successfully in the High Court.
Following his release from the maximum security Barwon Prison in Victoria on April 7, Cardinal Pell was driven from Melbourne to Sydney where he has been staying in a seminary since.