Vatican to await George Pell appeal before taking any action

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

Vatican to await George Pell appeal before taking any action

Close associate of Pope Francis faces jail sentence for child sexual abuse crimes

Angela Giuffrida in Rome, and Harriet Sherwood Religion correspondent
Tue 26 Feb 2019 18.00 GMT

The Catholic church’s already shaky credibility on sexual abuse was dealt another hammer blow on Tuesday, with its third most powerful figure and a close associate of Pope Francis facing a jail sentence for crimes committed against two choirboys in the 1990s.

The news that Cardinal George Pell – who until the weekend was in charge of the Holy See’s finances and of rooting out corruption at the heart of the church – had been found guilty on five charges of sexual abuse was painful and shocking, said the Vatican.

But survivors and activists were enraged at the church’s decision not to strip Pell of his position as a cardinal, at least until the judicial process was exhausted.

Pell, 77, has said he will appeal against the conviction, for which he will be sentenced on Wednesday. He is expected to face a prison term.

The Vatican said the disgraced prelate had “reiterated his innocence and has the right to defend himself to the last degree”. In the meantime, a ban on Pell exercising ministry or having contact with minors would remain in place.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/feb/26/george-pell-vatican-no-action-until-appeal-is-over

[MineralMan]

1. Maybe they should all just quit.

They could auction off the assets of the entire RCC, divide it all up among themselves, and shut everything down. They could admit that it was a all a fraud and that they're real sorry, but it's over. Put the Vatican library up for sale on Amazon as used books, sell the buildings, paintings and all, to some developer, and flee to some warm place with an ocean view.

Then, we could build a high wall around whatever place they select and ban them all from every leaving it.

Yeah, that's the ticket...

[Voltaire2]

2. Confiscate all their assets and turn them into

a victims compensation fund.

That shit they have in the Vatican is worth billions.

[Pope George Ringo II]

3. I'm sort of assuming the Vatican has trillions in the basement.

About 1980, my father the bank examiner was doing his job and ran across a loan made to the Diocese of Arlington. That one diocese four decades ago had assets worth over one billion, and not much in the way of liabilities.

As best he could make out, the only reason they took out the loan was to harangue people into donating more money to support the poor, cash-strapped church. My mother was dragging me to St. Leo's in Fairfax at the time. The pleas for support to help the poor, broke church pay off the loan were as passionate as they were laughable.

And the story of French nationalization of church property leading to fiat money problems is also worth examining when you want to talk about the sheer wealth of the organization. Has to be trillions or more in real value.

[Voltaire2]

4. Yeah I have no idea what the actual value

Is, it might well be over 1000 billion, so just pretend we are English, it would still be billions.

[Pope George Ringo II]

5. It's embarrassing enough actually being English right now with Brexit.

But however we slice it they have a simply mind-boggling level of ill-gotten gains.