AUSTRALIA
The Age
By Adam Cooper & Tom Cowie
1 May 2018
George Pell will be the most senior Catholic leader to face a jury after being committed to stand trial on multiple historic sexual assault charges.
In a decision that will ring loud through the Vatican and around the religious world, Australia’s most senior Catholic and the man who a year ago oversaw management of the Vatican’s finances was on Tuesday committed to stand trial on half the charges he faced, involving multiple accusers.
However, magistrate Belinda Wallington struck out a series of serious charges at the start of her ruling, finding there was insufficient evidence for him to be convicted by a jury.
Ms Wallington committed the 76-year-old on charges against multiple complainants, involving alleged sexual offending at a swimming pool in the 1970s in Ballarat, where the accused man was then working as a priest; and at St Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne in 1990s, when he was the then Archbishop of Melbourne.
Asked to enter a plea, Cardinal Pell said in a loud, clear voice: “Not guilty.”
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