Cardinal George Pell, Pope Francis’ former finance minister, is to soon return to the Vatican during an extraordinary economic scandal for the first time since he was cleared of child abuse allegations in Australia five months ago, a church agency said yesterday.
Pell is to fly back to Rome today, CathNews, an information agency of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference said, citing “sources close to” Pell.
Pell’s return follows Francis last week firing one of the cardinal’s most powerful opponents, Cardinal Angelo Becciu, over a financial scandal.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Pell was regarded as the third-highest-ranking Vatican official and was attempting to wrestle the Holy See’s opaque finances into order when he returned to Australia in 2017 to clear himself of decades-old allegations of child sex abuse.
Pell became the most senior Catholic to be convicted of child sex abuse crimes. He served 13 months in prison before the High Court of Australia acquitted him in April of molesting two choir boys in the late 1990s when he was archbishop of Melbourne.
In his first television interview after his release, Pell linked his fight against Vatican corruption with his prosecution in Australia.
The interview was conducted in April by Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt, a vocal champion of Pell who reported the news early yesterday of his return to the Vatican.
The Sydney Archdiocese did not respond to The Associated Press’ request for comment on Pell’s plans, but Katrina Lee, Pell’s close friend who is an executive adviser to the archdiocese, told Reuters that “he always intended to return to Rome.”
She confirmed the Herald Sun report, but said she did not know how long Pell was going for or the aim of the trip.
In the television interview, Pell said he did not have evidence of a link, but he suspected that a man who swore he had been sexually abused by Pell as a 13-year-old choirboy had been “used.”
Pell again seemed to hint at a link in a statement on Saturday to the Catholic News Agency in which he “thanked and congratulated” Francis for firing Becciu.
“I hope the cleaning of the stables continues in both the Vatican and Victoria,” he said, referring to his home state, where he was convicted.
Pell, 79, said in April that he planned to return to Rome when the COVID-19 pandemic allowed him to pack up his apartment, but he intended to make Sydney his home.
Becciu said he was fired after Francis told him that documents from the Italian financial police alleged that he had embezzled 100,000 euros (US$116,200).
Becciu, the 72-year-old former No. 2 in the Vatican’s secretariat of state, denied any wrongdoing.
Becciu’s name had previously been caught up in a whirlwind financial scandal involving the Holy See’s investment in a London real- estate venture.
Additional reporting by Reuters
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
‘UNWAVERING ALLIANCE’: The US Department of State said that China’s actions during military drills with Russia were not conducive to regional peace and stability The US on Tuesday criticized China over alleged radar deployments against Japanese military aircraft during a training exercise last week, while Tokyo and Seoul yesterday scrambled jets after Chinese and Russian military aircraft conducted joint patrols near the two countries. The incidents came after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi triggered a dispute with Beijing last month with her remarks on how Tokyo might react to a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan. “China’s actions are not conducive to regional peace and stability,” a US Department of State spokesperson said late on Tuesday, referring to the radar incident. “The US-Japan alliance is stronger and more
FALLEN: The nine soldiers who were killed while carrying out combat and engineering tasks in Russia were given the title of Hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that had returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Saturday. In a speech carried by KCNA, Kim praised officers and soldiers of the 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) for “heroic” conduct and “mass heroism” in fulfilling orders issued by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea during a 120-day overseas deployment. Video footage released by North Korea showed uniformed soldiers disembarking from an aircraft, Kim hugging a soldier seated in a wheelchair, and soldiers and officials
RSS