UNITED STATES
The Open Tabernacle: Here Comes Everybody
Posted on February 28, 2016 by Betty Clermont
Australian Cardinal George Pell will testify before the Royal Commission on child sex abuse today. Because his doctors claimed he was too ill to travel, Pell is allowed to give his testimony via video link from a hotel room in Rome between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. for three or four nights to coincide with 8 a.m. to noon, Sydney time.
Coincidentally, the Academy Awards show – in which Spotlight, about the Boston Globe‘s exposure of clerical sex abuse in Boston and an Oscar nominee for Best Picture, will be featured – will begin as Pell’s testimony concludes.
Pell will have to answer charges that he attempted to bribe a victim, he dismissed a victim’s complaint, knew about Australia’s worst predator priest, Gerald Ridsdale, and did nothing, and was complicit in moving Ridsdale from parish to parish.
In February 2015, the Royal Commission – the highest form of investigation in Australia – found that Pell “placed the Church’s financial interests above his obligation to victims of clerical sex abuse as part of an aggressive legal strategy to protect the assets of the Sydney archdiocese.”
Prior to being elevated to Prefect of the Secretariat of the Economy by Pope Francis, Pell’s previous financial expertise was cheating the victims out of an adequate compensation known as his “Melbourne response“ and “Ellis defense” where Pell “instructed his lawyers to crush this victim.”
To understand how Pope Francis was elected to a position to appoint Pell, we need to look at the state of the Vatican’s financial affairs preceding the 2013 conclave in which Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was chosen.
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