'Enormous devastation': George Pell guilty verdict rocks Catholic Church
The guilty verdict against Cardinal George Pell, a former Archbishop of Melbourne, on child sex abuse charges will cause "enormous devastation" to the Catholic Church and its followers, a Melbourne priest says.
Pell, one of the most senior Catholic figures in the world to be convicted of child sex offences, has been found guilty of orally raping one choirboy and molesting another in Melbourne’s St Patrick’s Cathedral 22 years ago.
The cardinal was Archbishop of Melbourne when he abused the two 13-year-old boys and was managing the church’s response to widespread child abuse by priests through the “Melbourne Response”, which he designed.
The Australian Catholic Archbishops Conference said news of Pell’s conviction had "shocked many across Australia and around the world, including the Catholic Bishops of Australia".
"The Bishops agree that everyone should be equal under the law, and we respect the Australian legal system. The same legal system that delivered the verdict will consider the appeal that the Cardinal’s
legal team has lodged," they said in a statement 90 minutes after the verdict was announced.
"Our hope, at all times, is that through this process, justice will be served. In the meantime, we pray for all those who have been abused and their loved ones, and we commit ourselves anew to doing everything possible to ensure that the Church is a safe place for all, especially the young and the vulnerable."
Father Kevin Dillon, a parish priest at Rowville in Melbourne’s south-east, said news of the conviction against Pell would rock the church and its followers.
“I think [there] will be an enormous sense of devastation for [local Catholics], particularly as the charges relate to the time as Archbishop of Melbourne and I think that carries with it an even greater weight,” Fr Dillon said.
Fr Dillon has long criticised the church's handling of child sexual abuse cases involving clergy, and acted as an advocate for victims of such abuse.
"I think the average Catholic person has been, and continues to be, just rocked by these sort of offences being committed by so many people at all levels of the church hierarchy," he said.
Francis Sullivan, the former head of the Truth, Justice and Healing Council set up by the Catholic Church in response to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse, said he thought parishioners would be "incredibly shocked and devastated" at the guilty verdict against Pell.
"One, they'd be absolutely confounded that Cardinal George Pell as an individual has been convicted for this," Mr Sullivan said.
"At the other level, they’ll be devastated because it seems that the whole clerical sex abuse scandal continues to confront and demoralise the Catholic community.
"It’s a shocking day. It's come right out of the blue for people."
Mr Sullivan said the conviction would leave people "dumbfounded," as the Cardinal had been a "loud and strong voice against clerical sex abuse" and "at the forefront of innovations around child protection in the church".
He said Pell's conviction would be demoralising for people within the church, its followers, and those who are employed by the institution.
"This is another big hit to the morale.
"It’s also devastating [to] how people identify as Catholics, at many levels – people who attend, people who practise, people who identify as Catholic, people who associate with Catholic institutions as employees and so on will have reactions from the visceral to the depressed."
With Adam Cooper