The third-highest ranked member of the Vatican, Cardinal George Pell, has been convicted in Australia of sexually molesting two choirboys in the 1990s.
However, media in that country can’t report on the case because of a court-ordered publication ban. The order was meant to ensure impartiality during the Cardinal’s Melbourne trial, but it is slammed in Australia as censorship. Pell, 77, was accused of molesting the boys at Melbourne’s St Patrick’s Cathedral in 1996. At that time he was Archbishop of Melbourne. Pell faces another trial in 2019. Dubbed the ‘swimmers trial’ it will hear allegations Pell “sexually offended” two boys in the 1970s as they swam at a pool in a Melbourne suburb. The Washington Post says the publication ban echoes the secrecy that has always been so appalling a part of widespread sexual abuse by priests. The Catholic Church’s culture of denial and its stonewalling has been disgraceful. Journalists - whose core mission is truth-telling - shouldn’t be forced to be a party to it. From today’s National Post of Canada. Roland Francis Toronto.
