Quite happy for Cardinal Pell to be accorded an opportunity to have his evidence thoroughly tested by space age, unbeatable lie detection equipment.

In fact, if such a test were offered and he failed, ought to die in prison then rot in hell for eternity. For some of the most heinous crimes a person given such trust can commit!

Seen by his supporters as minor misdemeanours! Rather than the heinous betrayal of trust, theft of innocence this heinous crimes really are! Have in past times led to the suicide of hugely psychologically damaged victims.

I believe the jury got it right, a Cardinal is not above the law, nor a Pope!

He still has the appeal process to negotiate, and should a very senior judge find that there was some error in law? The judgement could be overturned.

Of importance was the suppression order placed on earlier convictions, five.

The fact that the defence placed such importance on suppressing that salient fact, very telling/may weigh heavily on the appeal judges determinations. Which if successful will not exonerate this highly placed church official but may keep him out of prison.

But never ever from having to face his maker, account for his actions or final eternal justice, whatever that may be.

What you and I believe? Is ultimately, of no importance, nor likely to affect the final judgement of someone who knows everything we all do, what is truly in our hearts!?

That my friend is the man in the mirror, the one none of us can successfully lie to or excuse!

Let me conclude by witnessing, that hell is a very real place, a thousand times more terrifying than your very worst nightmare. I'd sooner do my time/punishment here, no matter how injurious, than do any of it there!

I take some comfort in the Maker being the very epitome of love personified and understanding, we are all of us, even Cardinals, just flawed human beings. And judging us accordingly.

My sympathies lie with the victims!
Alan B.

Alan. your Makers were your mother and father. No supreme being was involved.
David

As a boy, staying for around 18 months at an uncle and aunt's place. Had occasion to complain about the extremely troubling activities of a Marist Brother/school Principle.

And witnessed the outrage my remarks created. And received a very severe flogging for daring to utter such filth!

Remember many an occasion of being belted to the ground by an adult Brother's fists for daring to presume I owned my stuff.

Remember being mercilessly flogged and until the arm raising the leather could lift it no more and for every day of a seemingly endless 18 months.

Had my very first fist fight, aged just six and a half. My attacker a 15-year-old fellow inmate who thought I was too pretty to be a boy. A fight I won and dozens of others that followed.

But not able to hold my own when gang tackled etc-etc.

I'm here to tell you all the horror stories you heard about Catholic and state-run institutions are true and that pedophiles hide behind their robes and the protection of birds of a feather?

Why else have these things been allowed to happen or persist for so long? And so heinous as to beggar belief.

I survived, bowed but not beaten by becoming a seemingly fearless rebel, albeit, quaking in my boots with legs of jelly that barely supported me.

Being routinely disbelieved, par for the course and eventually the very reason for my enduring silence and no doubt those of many other damaged victims.

I mean, just look at some of the earlier commentary and the unprovoked hostility toward the damaged victims (by fellow travellers) to understand why this behaviour and injustice has persisted for so long! Centuries in fact.

Not for nothing is it writ large, there are none so blind as those who will not see!
Alan B.

Dearest Foxy,

I can't stand Pell. I've always been an atheist, and if anything, from a proddy background.

In Scotland, I think the system allows for three sorts of verdicts in such trials: guilty, not guilty and not proven.

Without corroborating evidence, it seems that Pell was found guilty on the word of one person, and no physical evidence whatever. Maybe there was more evidence presented in court, but on the face of it, I'm very worried (Jesus, me, worried for a sanctimonious hypocrite like Pell !) that justice was not served well in this case.

Try this: imagine someone who you admire greatly, Dr di Natale or Kerryn Phelps or Bernie Sanders - now imagine that someone has accused them of some vile crime, committed twenty years ago. No evidence, only their say-so, spoken passionately with extreme honesty pouring out of their eyes and dripping with the burden of covering up a crime for so long.

In such a scenario, one might have misgivings about di Natale or Phelps or Sanders' guilt. Is the evidence enough to convict ? Is there more to the story ? Is it a complete, but honest and delusional, fabrication ? Are such things possible ?

The big question now is whether or not an appeals court would uphold the verdict on the basis of the evidence available. If no, then Pell goes free, forever, no more trials (at least not involving this witness). Free as a bird.

You've got to get it water-tight right, not just "Yeah, the bastard, that'll do."

Joe

David, we are more than flesh and bone. Which is just a vehicle we use to exist in the physical relm.

An interesting study done in France some years ago. Put cadavers on precise scales minutes after they died. To find that the scales moved quite suddenly around three quaters of an hour after clinical death, to suddenly record a lighter weigh of several ounces in a moment.

Not able to be explained by dehydration or any other normal occurance. An athelite's muscalature is strong before we die, yet minutes after the life force departs those same muscles tear and are rent asunder by half the load they were capable of bearing in life!

As a reurning and breifly clinically dead eyewitness, I can confirm that there is not only a life beyound this one, but one we are able to see it with our spiritual sensory equipment.

Moreover, if there is indeed a hell in the afterlife? Why not a heaven? And given those very real possibilities?

Why not intelligent design however you believe it to be? I look back on a life which has purpose, even the bad parts, for that has molded me and the character I am and have today.

You and I remain free to believe what we will! However, no matter the strength of those beliefs, but particularrly those spported by not so much as a single shred of evidence, could easily be fallacious.
Cheers, Alan B.

If the standard of not allowing uncorroborated testimony to enable a conviction then Pell's one time room mate Ridsdale would likely still be walking the streets. That evil man abused probably hundreds of kids yet the church even allowed him to have a lad stay with him and suffer daily abuse.

"The Commission heard many stories from victims including one who was sent to live alone with Ridsdale at age 14 at the presbytery in Mortlake. The victim said he was "sexually abused all the time just about every day" and the Commission heard evidence that Ronald Mulkearns was among a number of clergy who knew Ridsdale had a boy living with him, but failed to intervene. It was also found that every boy at the school at Mortlake between the age of 10 and 16 had been abused by Gerard Ridsdale." Wikipedia

To my knowledge the abuse always happened one on one and when it was flagged it was always just the victim's word against his.

Were his convictions unjust as you are claiming for Pell's?