The verdict is unsatisfactory. Any prosecution should have used multiple witnesses and other corroborating evidence, preferably less than one decade old let alone two. I understand the double jeopardy principle now prevents another more rigorous prosecution. Therefore those who set out to get Pell have lost the respect of much of the public. Formally that includes the Victoria Police and informally media outlets such as the ABC. We now have trial by gossip.

The law and justice have little in common.

Pell is certainly orthodox; one of the few senior priests who has stuck to the teachings of the church, in all things, no matter how unpopular it makes him.

And, it has certainly made him unpopular with the hierarchy of a church that has been radically 'feminised’ under leftist Jorge Mario Bergoglio, aka, Pope Francis, who broke tradition by not taking the name of a past popes, probably because they were all too Catholic and manly for him.

It has been said of Francis that he will have a think about abuse in the church when he gets tired of prattling about climate change.

The Catholic church is now about gays, with manly priests and would-have-been priests staying away in droves. Congregations are falling off as the Catholic church turns away from the word of God to secular matters, making the church little different from anything else, and certainly not want parishioners crave.

The 'Lavender Mafia’ in the Vatican is glad to see the back of George Pell.

“An unnamed Melbourne priest said: "It is clear it is no longer possible for a Catholic priest to get a fair trial in this State”.

Swap 'State’ for Western world, and that's true. And, if the system can do to a high profile Christian what it has done to Pell, what hope do the rest of us have: a quick trial by idiots, and locked away without the world even knowing

I suggest that those people who have doubts about the verdict should watch the 4 Corners program that went to air last night on the ABC and you might change your minds.
Pell is Guilty as charged and his appeal will fail.

David

Unless you were in the court for the entire
proceedings you have no way of knowing
what went on, what was presented, and why
the jury of 12 reached the verdict that they
did. The fact remains that they found Cardinal
Pell guilty on all counts. It was a unanimous
verdict. Yes, juries sometimes do get things
wrong - but that is rare. We need to believe in
our jury system and the judicial process.
I do.

Whether the Appeal will succeed - we have
yet to wait and see. In the meantime - we should
not be doing irrepairable damage in the message
we would be sending to other victims who may want to come
forward by saying that we do not believe in our jury
system - and worse - that we do not believe them.

Children who are abused have their lives destroyed. They grow into troubled adults who have dropped out of school, turned to drugs and alcohol to ease their pain, found relationships difficult because of trust issues and have often taken their own lives. But there was one young man who broke this mold and kept it together, ego intact. He went to the police and became a credible witness. He is a hero because he has changed everything forever.