Abused and despised, George Pell contemplated giving up his fight

By Steve Jackson
Australian
July 13, 2020

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/abused-and-despised-george-pell-contemplated-giving-up-his-fight/news-story/2fb159d43c35f6e7fb6ee68cb020c2e9

Cardinal George Pell has revealed he was spat on and abused by fellow prisoners while serving time in jail for historical child sex offences and that, in his darkest hours, he contemplated abandoning his fight to clear his name.

Opening up about his time ­behind bars, Australia’s highest-ranking Catholic also said the fact he was despised by many of his fellow inmates for being a convicted child sex offender actually helped restore his faith in the natural “existence of right and wrong”.

“All of us are tempted to despise those we define as worse than ourselves,” he said. “Even murderers share in the disdain toward those who violate the young.

“However ironic, this disdain is not all bad, as it expresses a belief in the existence of right and wrong, good and evil.”

Cardinal Pell was sentenced to six years in prison in March 2019 after being found guilty of sexually abusing two 13-year-old choir boys at Melbourne’s St Patrick’s Cathedral in the 1990s.