As Callista Gingrich departs, she's the new "COAT" in US/Vatican ties
- Jan 16, 2021
Australia’s highest court on Tuesday will judge Cardinal George Pell’s appeal against convictions for molesting two teenage choirboys more than two decades ago. But the legal battle over the world’s most senior Catholic convicted of sexually abusing children may not end there.
Australia’s High Court has released the full set of submissions for Cardinal George Pell’s March 11 and 12 final appeal hearing against historic child sexual abuse crimes.
The Australian states of Victoria and Tasmania have become the latest in the country to pass legislation criminalizing priests who fail to report the abuse of children disclosed during confession.
The Australian Catholic Church could face tens of millions of dollars in compensation claims after the Diocese of Ballarat in Victoria state admitted, for the first time, it knew of the behavior of a pedophile priest yet continued to move him around from parish to parish.
A chaplain at an Australian prison for pedophiles on Thursday described the prospect of ministering to a cardinal who until recently was regarded as the third highest-ranking Catholic in the Vatican as “nerve racking.”
Cardinal George Pell’s lawyers argued in his appeal that there were more than a dozen “solid obstacles” that should have prevented a jury from finding him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of molesting two choirboys.