ROME
Crux

March 13, 2019

By John L. Allen Jr.

In early June, Cardinal George Pell of Australia will have a hearing before the Supreme Court of Victoria regarding his appeal of a conviction for sexually abusing two minor altar boys in the 1990s, for which he was sentenced Wednesday morning local time to 6 years in prison with the possibility of parole after half that time is served.

While many uncertainties remain about the Pell case, at the level of public perceptions perhaps the greatest is this: Is the 77-year-old prelate destined to become the Adolf Eichmann, the Count of Monte Cristo, or the Rosenbergs of the clerical abuse scandals?

Respectively, those figures have passed into history as leading symbols of the following possibilities vis-à-vis criminal justice: