The Next Edition
  • Home
  • About Us
  • News
  • Featured
  • Investigations
  • Foreign
  • Special Reports
  • Entertainment
  • Interviews
  • Advert Rate
No Result
View All Result
The Next Edition
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • About Us
  • News
  • Featured
  • Investigations
  • Foreign
  • Special Reports
  • Entertainment
  • Interviews
  • Advert Rate
Home Headline News

Top papal adviser charged with sexual assault in blow to Vatican

News Agency by News Agency
June 29, 2017
in Headline News
Top papal adviser charged with sexual assault in blow to Vatican

Cardinal Geroge Pell

0
SHARES
6
VIEWS
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on Whatsapp

Australian police charged a top adviser to Pope Francis with multiple historical sex crimes on Thursday, in a case that poses a dilemma for a pontiff who has vowed zero tolerance for such offences.

Cardinal George Pell is the Vatican’s de facto treasury minister and is the highest-ranking Vatican official to be charged with sexual abuse.

You might also like

Four Dead, ’18 Injured’ As IEDs Explode In Yobe

Police Arrest Two Traffic Robbers In Lagos

Lagos Assembly Approves Solar-powered Street Lighting Initiative

He faces “multiple charges in respect of historic sexual offences” from multiple complainants, said police in the Australian state of Victoria, where Pell was a country priest in the 1970s.

The police did not specify the charges against Pell, 76, nor the ages of the alleged victims nor when the crimes were alleged to have occurred.

The Australian Catholic Church said in a statement that Pell strenuously denied the charges and planned to return to Australia to “clear his name”.

“He said he is looking forward to his day in court and will defend the charges vigorously,” the statement said.

It also said his doctors would advise on his travel arrangements.

Pell angered victims at a government inquiry into institutional child abuse in Australia in 2016 by saying he was too sick to fly home, testifying instead from Rome.

He was ordered to appear before Melbourne Magistrates Court onJuly 18.

The cardinal was due to make a statement at the Vatican later on Thursday.

The latest development in the long-running Pell case piled pressure on the pope to make good on promises to sack bishops found guilty of abuse, or of covering it up.

Francis told reporters last year he would wait until Australian justice took its course before taking a position on Pell, and that his financial controller since 2014 should not undergo trial by media.

“It’s in the hands of the justice system and one cannot judge before the justice system,” the pope said at the time.

“After the justice system speaks, I will speak.”

Pell told the Australian inquiry in 2016 the Church had made “catastrophic” choices by refusing to believe abused children, shuffling abusive priests from parish to parish and relying too heavily on the counsel of priests to solve the problem.

Francis’s attempts to root out sexual abuse in the Church have hit stumbling blocks.

Marie Collins, the top non-clerical member of a papal commission on abuse, resigned in frustration earlier this year, citing “shameful” resistance to change within the Vatican.

Church sexual abuse broke into the open in 2002, when it was discovered that U.S. bishops in the Boston area moved abusers instead of defrocking them.

Similar scandals have since been discovered around the world and tens of millions of dollars have been paid in compensation.

Thousands of cases have come to light as investigations have encouraged long-silent victims to go public.

“I would suspect (the charges against Pell) are going to be stunning to the Vatican and to the pope himself,” said Thomas Doyle, the U.S. priest whose report on sexual abuse in the Church led to the discovery of cover-up practices in Boston.

Under previous popes, the Vatican, a sovereign state in the middle of Rome, sheltered officials wanted by other countries.

In the early 1980s, the Vatican refused to hand over to Italy Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, an American who was then head of the Vatican bank and was wanted for questioning about the fraudulent bankruptcy of a private Italian bank.

Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston moved to Rome after a sexual abuse scandal erupted in his diocese and has been living in the Italian capital for more than 15 years.

Victims groups were outraged when Law, now 85 and retired, was given a plum job as chief priest at a Rome basilica by the late Pope John Paul.

However, Francis was tough in the case of Jozef Wesolowski, a former archbishop who was accused of paying for sex with minors while serving as papal ambassador in the Dominican Republic.

Wesolowski was recalled in 2013, defrocked and arrested in the Vatican in 2014 but died shortly before his trial was due to start in 2015.

Victims’ support groups say successive popes have failed to grasp the gravity of the situation.

“It would be naive for us to assume that people will be only relieved,” Neil Woodger, vice president of the In Good Faith Foundation, said of the charges against Pell.

“They’re going to be experiencing a bit of distress as well,” he said.

“It is a result that I think points to justice working and that justice is there for everybody.”

Woodger’s foundation says it represents 460 victims of Catholic Church abuse in Australia.

 

(Reuters/NAN)

News Agency

News Agency

Recommended For You

Police Arrest 'immigration officer,' 3Others With Trailers Of Rustled Cows

Four Dead, ’18 Injured’ As IEDs Explode In Yobe

At least four people have been killed and 18 reportedly injured following two separate improvised explosive device (IED) explosions in Gujba LGA of Yobe state. According to Zagazola...

Police Arrest Hotelier Over OAU Post-Graduate Student’s Death

Police Arrest Two Traffic Robbers In Lagos

  Operatives of the Lagos Rapid Response Squad (RRS), a unit of the Lagos Police Command, have arrested two notorious traffic robbers operating in the Ketu and Mile...

Lagos Govt Reaffirms Ban On Flogging In Schools, Upholds Counseling

Lagos Assembly Approves Solar-powered Street Lighting Initiative

  The Committee urged the Lagos State Electricity Board to ensure equitable distribution of the solar street lights across all parts of the state. The Lagos House of...

Senate Confirms Sani Adam As INEC National Commissioner

Constitution Review: Senate To Consider States Creation Requests, State Police, Other Bills

The Senate committee responsible for reviewing the 1999 constitution has announced that it will evaluate 31 proposals for the creation of new states as part of a renewed...

Next Post

Fayose lied over state of Buhari’s health– Activist




Related News

Anger in Ogoni over delay in cleaning up oil spill

Group Decries Slow Pace Of Clean-up Of Ogoniland

South-East Governors Not As Courageous As Their South-West Counterparts - Anike

South-East Governors Not As Courageous As Their South-West Counterparts – Anike

Army probes N300,000 extortion case against soldiers by drivers

Army probes N300,000 extortion case against soldiers by drivers




The Next Edition

Office Address

3B, Agboola Aina street, Off Toyin Street,
Ikeja, Lagos.

Quick Contact Details

Phone:
08033018430
Whatsapp:
08051679910

Email:
[email protected]
[email protected]

Categories

  • Aviation
  • Beauty
  • Breaking News
  • Business
  • Columnists
  • Editorial
  • Entertainment
  • Fashion
  • Featured
  • Football
  • Foreign
  • Headline News
  • Home & Garden
  • Interviews
  • Investigations
  • North Central
  • North East
  • North West
  • Opinion
  • Parenting
  • Politics
  • Relationships
  • South East
  • South West
  • South-South
  • Special Reports
  • Sports
  • Top News
  • Vox Pops

© Next Edition Business Development Limited

  • About Us
  • Advert Rate
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Use
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • About Us
  • News
  • Featured
  • Investigations
  • Foreign
  • Special Reports
  • Entertainment
  • Interviews
  • Advert Rate

© Next Edition Business Development Limited