UPDATED: Australian cardinal sentenced to prison for child sex abuse
Cardinal George Pell arrives at an Australian court, in Melbourne, Australia, Monday, March 5, 2018. Pell attended a hearing to determine whether prosecutors have sufficient evidence to try him on sexual abuse charges. Last Updated Tuesday, March 12, 2019 11:41PM EDT
Pope Francis' former finance minister was convicted by a unanimous jury verdict in December of orally raping a 13-year-old choirboy and indecently dealing with the boy and the boy's 13-year-old friend in the late 1990s, months after Pell became archbishop of Melbourne. A court order had suppressed media reporting the news until last month.
The judge also took pains to note that he was sentencing Pell for the offences on which the cardinal had been convicted -- and not for the sins of the Catholic Church. The father of a victim who died of a heroin overdose in 2014 at the age of 31 described the sentence as "a disappointment," said the father's lawyer Lisa Flynn.
Asked by a reporter outside court after the sentencing whether the case against Pell amounted to a witch hunt, his lawyer Robert Richter gave a rueful smile.After centuries of impunity, cardinals from Australia to Chile and points in between are facing justice in both the Vatican and government courts for their own sexual misdeeds or for having shielded abusers under their watch.
Pell gave evidence by video link from Rome to the royal commission, the nations' highest level of inquiry, in 2016 about his time as a church leader in Melbourne and in his hometown of Ballarat.
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