Sydney - For two decades, George Pell
was the dominant figure in the Catholic Church in Australia - a
boy from a gold mining town whose ambition, intellect and knack
for befriending influential people propelled him to become the
third-most senior official in the Vatican.
That came crashing down in December, when a court found
Pell, 77, guilty of five charges of child sex offences committed
on two 13-year-old choir boys in a Melbourne.
On Wednesday, Pell's fall was complete as he was sentenced
to six years in jail and registered as a sex offender for the
rest of his life, which the judge acknowledged Pell may now
spend in jail.
Pell is the most senior Roman Catholic official to be
convicted of sexual offences, bringing a rolling abuse scandal
that has dogged the church worldwide for three decades to the
heart of both the Vatican and Australian civic life.
"Your obvious status as Archbishop cast a powerful shadow
over this offending," County Court of Victoria Chief Judge Peter
Kidd said of Pell during the sentencing, where he described
Pell's crimes as "brazen" and grave".
Pell maintains his innocence and his appeal against the
verdict will be heard in June.
Pell, who has been held in custody for the past two weeks,
now faces years in a Victorian prison, a far cry from the
apartment where he lived in Piazza Citta Leonina, a small square
just across the street from the Vatican's St. Ann's Gate.
BALLARAT BOY
Pell spent most of his first three decades as a priest in
Ballarat, an old gold mining town in the state of Victoria,
about 120 km (75 miles) from Melbourne.
State and federal inquiries would later find it to be one of
the Catholic dioceses worst-affected by cases of abuse, though
none of the complaints against Pell stem from his time there.
It was after Pell left his hometown to become Archbishop of
Melbourne in 1996 that he committed offences against two choir
boys in the city's St Patrick's Cathedral for which he was found
guilty by the 12-person jury.
It was not until 2016 that the complaints against Pell were
first made public, with charges laid in 2017, and in the
meantime he continued to rise through Australia's Church
hierarchy.
By 2001 when Pell became Archbishop of Sydney, the country's
top-ranking Catholic position, he was a polarising national
figure – revered by many conservative Catholics but criticised
by liberals for his outspoken views.
At a 2002 World Youth Day event in Toronto, Pell made
headlines by saying "abortion is a worse moral scandal than
priests sexually abusing young people" since abortion was
"always a destruction of human life".
FINANCIAL ROLE
In meetings among cardinals before the conclave that elected
Pope Francis in 2013, the Australian stood out not only for his
imposing height and broad shoulders, but also for his command of
financial matters.
Hoping to end Vatican financial scandals, the pope moved
Pell to Rome and in 2014 he was appointed to run a new ministry,
the Secretariat for the Economy.
Meanwhile, in Australia, a state inquiry into institutional
abuse began airing accounts of child abuse and cover-ups in
Ballarat and elsewhere over generations, triggering a more
powerful, comprehensive Federal Royal Commission inquiry.
Pell was not named as an alleged perpetrator at either
inquiry. When he was called to give evidence at the Royal
Commission it was only in relation to his knowledge of others'
conduct, and the question of whether he was present when church
leaders decided to move offending priests between parishes.
In testimony to the commission in March 2016, Pell said that
he did not know of the sexual abuse of children in Ballarat by
another priest in the 1970s until his conviction in 1993,
although the commission had heard testimony from others that the
priest's behaviour was an open secret in the diocese.
"It's a sad story and it wasn't of much interest to me," he
told that inquiry. Pell also said the Church made "catastrophic"
choices by minimising its response to, and covering up, abuse
complaints.
TRUE BELIEVERS
When the global wave of abuse allegations reached Pell in
June 2017, some of the country's most powerful people stood by
him, including former conservative prime minister Tony Abbott,
himself a devout Catholic, who told a newspaper "the George Pell
I have known is a very fine man indeed".
After the conviction was made public in Australia last
month, Abbott told a radio programme he had called Pell,
although he declined to give details of the conversation.
"I'm not a fair-weather friend," Abbott said.
Another conservative former prime minister, John Howard,
provided a written character reference for Pell in court after
his conviction, saying he had known Pell for 30 years.
"None of these matters alter my opinion of the Cardinal,"
Howard wrote.
The most senior Catholic of all, Pope Francis, who faces
calls to strip Pell of his Cardinal status, has said he would
withhold comment until the appeal process was concluded.
Pell was among three cardinals the pope removed from his
group of close advisers a day after the December verdict. No
reason was given at the time.