...Pell was asked to clean up Vatican finances and found rampant abuse and criminality. He called for an independent audit after meeting staunch resistance from Cardinal Becciu.
Cardinal Pell gets accused of pedophilia in Australia - an accusation with no credible merit, but one that nonetheless went on for years while they imprisoned him before he was ultimately found innocent.
Cardinal Pell’s financial investigations are halted in the meantime.
It has been thrown out that Becciu was influencing the attack on Pell in Australia to take him out of the way.
This is now being investigated.
Pope Francis asked Becciu to resign this past Fall when it was clear that a business deal over a London building was done illegally and brought great scandal. He was also “stripped of his cardinal hood”.
Pell stands vindicated, though he went through great trial. The Australian court system kept inexplicably finding him guilty as a sort of scapegoat for other transgressors until commons sense prevailed at the highest court which required no TV cameras in order to remove media pressure (of course, the media convicted him from the start).
Pell had no support from the Vatican.
Link: https://www.ncregister.com/news/cardinal-pell-surprised-by-technicolor-criminality-of-vatican-financial-scandals
The "evidence" against Cardinal Pell at trial was scant and not credible. One small point -- I'm not sure the media convicted him from the start, as you suggest, if for no other reason than in Australia it is illegal to report on criminal trials of this sort. There was not a whole lot of coverage, and the little I read during the trial seemed to favor Pell's defense that there was no evidence to support the charges..
Now, there is evidence that Becciu transferred a significant amount of money to Australia before the trial. There is speculation that it was used to pay off the primary accuser, to suborn perjury, although I have not seen any reports that this has been proved. Becciu filed a libel suit against the Italian newspaper that reported it. What is clear, however, is that Francis forced Becciu to resign as a cardinal, which shows that Francis knows something significant.
put pressure on the court and influenced the initial conviction. The problem was so bad in Australia that the highest court had all media and cameras removed from the court on the day of their decision. But i am glad that you have been following this. This man suffered for his faith.
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