A protest attended by relatives and victims of sexual abuse today in Sydney marked the funeral of Australian Cardinal George Pell, convicted and later acquitted of the crime of pedophilia.
Hundreds of people gathered in front of St. Mary’s, at a protest by a gay rights group, shouting, “Pell, go to hell.”
Relatives and victims of child sexual abuse, who tied hundreds of ribbons to the railings around the cathedral on Wednesday, joined the protest with signs reading “Forget Pell, think of the children”.
Australian police had gone to court to try to ban the protest, with Deputy Commissioner David Hudson insisting that “a number of aspects” of the march “posed a risk to public safety”.
The protesters’ chants prevented parishioners gathered in the cathedral courtyard from seeing and hearing the mass celebrated in memory of George Pell broadcast on screens, leading to verbal clashes between the two groups.
The funeral service was attended by hundreds of worshippers, including former Conservative Prime Minister John Howard and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, although the current head of the Australian government, Anthony Albanese, did not attend.
In the homily, the Archbishop of Sydney, Anthony Fisher, said “the slander of the enemy was groundless and the arrest unjust, and history will remember [George Pell] (…) for courage”.
Pell, who died in Rome on Jan. 10 at age 81, was acting as economy minister, the third most important figure in Vatican City, when he was formally charged in 2017 with five assaults on two minors in the 1990s. .
Found guilty in December 2018, Pell was sentenced to six years in prison for the acts committed in St Patrick while Archbishop of Melbourne, the sentence confirmed in August 2019.
After 404 days in prison, Pell was released in April 2020, when Australia’s Supreme Court, the country’s highest court, reversed the sentence.
Lawyers representing the plaintiff in Australia’s ongoing trial for psychological harm and alleged sexual abuse, of which the cardinal was acquitted, said they would continue proceedings against the Catholic Church.
Pell has always pleaded not guilty, but admitted he had not done enough to protect victims of sexual abuse by Australian clergy.
A government commission investigating allegations of pedophilia within Australian institutions received about 4,500 complaints against more than 1,800 religious for sexual abuse committed in the country between 1985 and 2015 and found in 2017 that Pell was “aware” of the problem at the church .
Source: DN
