
George Pell: cardinal found guilty of child sexual assault - xiaodai
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/feb/26/cardinal-george-pell-vatican-treasurer-found-guilty-of-child-sexual-assault
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joshschreuder
If you feel like you've heard this already in December and are unsure why it's
in the news again, there was a media suppression order that prevented it from
being reported in Australia, due to a second court case involving Pell that
was due to start in April.

That case was dropped today due to insufficient evidence and the supression
order is no longer in place, so the Australian media can now report freely.

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mnm1
This is part of a much larger issue that seems to have no boundaries and exist
pretty mouth everywhere: that authorities are uninterested in processing rape
cases and bringing the perpetrators to justice. Time and time again they let
the perpetrators' institutions handle this. The church. The university. The
corporation. Why don't authorities subpoena records instead of letting these
institutions destroy them? This is their whole reason for existence, after
all. Is it because so often the victims are women and children who are thought
of as less than by the police and other authorities? It's despicable that each
case is not investigated. Most times even rape kits are not tested, let alone
any other kind of investigation. We have given these authorities the power to
investigate these crimes and yet they do nothing. It seems to be a worldwide
problem too. Are children and women that worthless to the men in power that
their rape doesn't deserve investigation, that they do not deserve justice?

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trhway
>His authority came from Rome, where he sat on a number of councils policing
church doctrine. These were the years the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith worked up fresh hard teachings to revile homosexuals.

"Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith" is the renamed Inquisition :

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisition)

"With the exception of the Papal States, the institution of the Inquisition
was abolished in the early 19th century, after the Napoleonic Wars in Europe
and the Spanish American wars of independence in the Americas. The institution
survived as part of the Roman Curia, but in 1908 it was renamed the "Supreme
Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office". In 1965 it became the Congregation
for the Doctrine of the Faith."

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xlii
What I find most interesting in recent findings is how millenias of
beaurocratic development are completelly defenceless against current stage of
technology.

For past couple centuries, Church created notion of "we are judge of
ourselves" which most often either meant delegating case to far away place,
which no interested party could visit, or by reloacting to another region with
unlikely connection (and this connection was very unlikely, since Catholic
Church keeps their own births, deaths and movement metrics, so those were far
from random).

Right now, since everything is transparent and just few taps away, this method
no longer works and Church is totally lost in how to deal with it. Senior
members refute all responsibility either through long-hardened loyalty or - in
some cases - to protect their own wrongdoings from coming out. That makes the
matter even worse. Elderly age and resulting lack of will to change doesn’t
help the case either.

I think of it as a David vs Goliath fight, where Goliath is more than 2000
years of institutional experience and David is a kid with a camera in his
smartphone.

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tomhoward
This case is about an alleged incident around 23 years ago - 10-15 years
before smartphones or IP security cameras were widespread.

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xlii
And yet it closed only in December. My point is not about victims recording
acts of violence, but about church not being able to defer ad infinitum and
making illusionary ammends.

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senectus1
Bill Marr being appropriately brutal.

~~~
thomasfoster96
The article is by David Marr.

~~~
wp381640
who wrote _The Prince: Faith, Abuse and George Pell_ a seminal biography of
the now-convicted cardinal[0]

Also one of Australia's best journalists

[0] [https://www.themonthly.com.au/blog/david-
marr/2013/09/18/137...](https://www.themonthly.com.au/blog/david-
marr/2013/09/18/1379486457/prince-george-pell)

