AUSTRALIA
Inquisitr
December 12, 2018
By Manuella Libardi
Cardinal George Pell, the Vatican’s third most powerful official, was found guilty on Tuesday of sexually abusing two choir boys in the late 1990s, a decision that makes him the highest-ranking Catholic Church official to face criminal convictions.
According to The Daily Beast, a jury in Australia returned a unanimous guilty verdict after deliberating for more than three days on the case. The judge ordered the criminal trial to be conducted under a gag order that prevented any details of the trial being made public, the report continues.
The judge placed a suppression order on all press coverage in Australia right before trial proceedings were set to begin in June, according to the judge’s orders reviewed by The Daily Beast. The order was requested by prosecutors and granted to “prevent a real and substantial risk of prejudice to the proper administration of justice,” the order reads, according to the report.
Pell, 77, who is the Vatican’s finance chief and the highest Vatican official to ever go stand trial on sex abuse charges, left Rome in June 2017 to stand trial in Melbourne, the report continues.
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