Prime suspect arrested in murder of Philippines priest

Melbourne, Australia, Nov 6, 2019 / 07:00 am (CNA).- Two former employees of the cathedral school in Melbourne, Australia are expressing strong doubts about the charges that landed Cardinal George Pell— the most senior member of the hierarchy ever convicted of sexual abuse— in prison.

The former employees, Lil Sinozic and Jean Corish, have also expressed disappointment that Pell’s defence team did not call them as witnesses in the trial.

Pell, 78, was convicted of exposing himself and forcing two choir boys to commit sex acts while fully vested in his Sunday Mass garb, almost immediately after Mass in the priests’ sacristy at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in 1996. Pell was at that time Archbishop of Melbourne.

He was also convicted of fondling one of the boys in a corridor in 1997.

Pell has maintained his innocence, with his defense making central the argument that the alleged crimes would have been, under the circumstances, “simply impossible.”

Both Cornish and Sinozic were on duty nearly every Sunday morning at the cathedral in late 1996. 

Sinozic, a former teacher and executive assistant to then Father— now Monsignor— Charles Portelli, who was Pell’s master of ceremonies, echoed the defense, insisting that the circumstances of the alleged crimes as presented to the jury simply did not add up.

“I just know for a fact that what they’re describing could not have happened, given the situation in the sacristy after Mass…to say that there was this five minute interval where these acts were performed, and nobody saw or heard anything is ridiculous. I don’t know why the jury was led to believe otherwise,” she told CNA in an interview. 

Pell was convicted Dec. 11, 2018 on five charges of sexual abuse. CNA reported last year that his initial trial, bound by a gag order, ended in a mistrial; this fact was confirmed by one of the judges in the Aug. 21 proceeding.

The prosecution rested on the testimony of one of the alleged victims— the one reported to have suffered two instances of abuse by Pell. The other victim died in 2014 and was unable to testify, but had in 2001 denied to his mother that any abuse occurred while he was a member of the choir.

Although Sinozic was not present on the date of the alleged incidents, she said she was very familiar with the Sunday Mass routine within the cathedral, and the behavior of the people involved.

“Normally the archbishop would go out the front of the cathedral, and he would spend at least half an hour, if not an hour, meeting and greeting people,” she said.

“Particularly at that time, when he was new, everyone was curious about him and wanted to get to know him. So he would have spent quite a good deal of time out front just chatting to people. And then he was always followed by his entourage; he would have had his master of ceremonies, other people hanging on, and the sacristy was always busy as a beehive after Mass, as you might imagine.”

She also pointed out that Cornish, her colleague, would have been patrolling the area where the alleged incident occurred “all the time” because there was a problem with tourists coming in near the sacristy, and walking into the cathedral during Mass.

Though Cornish told CNA that her recollections of the months of Oct. 1996 to Christmas 1996 are “sketchy to say the least,” she confirmed Sinozic’s view that it would be highly unlikely for the archbishop to be totally alone minutes after the end of Mass.

“It could be up to an hour after the end of Mass before the area was clear of people who were in all the areas mentioned by the accuser, including the priests sacristy which was the busiest of all the sacristies at that time,” Cornish said in an emailed response to CNA’s questions.

Cornish is the former principal of Good Shepherd Catholic school in Melbourne. She said her office at the time in 1996 was in the presbytery, which was connected to the cathedral.

The archbishop had asked her to be the lead staffer for the forthcoming centenary celebrations of St Patrick’s Cathedral in addition to her regular job as the school principal.

She said the archbishop would always spend a great deal of time shaking hands and greeting people after Mass, even as protestors sometimes made their presence known with placards, shouting slogans like as “Pell go to hell” and ”We will get you Pell no matter what.”

Cornish also said she was in the habit of observing the activities and movement of people in the cathedral’s sacristy area.

“This was something I had learned to do even in the short 2 months I had been there, as the main sacristy corridor door was open to allow the altar servers, the assistant sacristan, Ralph [now deceased] and Alan the florist as well as others who attended to the sanctuary and sacred vessels to access the area freely.”

Cornish said she believes that the area where the abuse allegedly occurred was the “busiest and most open” of the sacristy areas, and reiterated that Pell was never alone before, during, or after a Sunday Mass.

To get to the vesting room, which did not have its own door, one would have had to go through the main sacristy, Sinozic said. She said the altar boys, who allegedly were drinking communion wine in the room where the alleged abuse occurred, would have had to go through several doors to get to the vesting room.

If the boys made their way back there, she said she finds it hard to believe that no one saw them.

“George is too smart to do something so stupid. Why would he do something like that? Knowing that anyone could walk in any second,” she commented. 

Someone would have asked what they were doing, Sinozic said, particularly an hour after Mass when all the other boys would have gone home, and their parents would be wondering where they were.

In addition, the cathedral had an evening Mass, so additional people would have already been in the cathedral preparing, she said. Cornish agreed, adding that it was “quite a major undertaking” to get the church ready again after a large concelebrated Mass.

“And they never mentioned anything for 22 years…why all of a sudden?” Sinozic wondered.

The incident is alleged to have occured when Pell was fully vested for Mass. Sinozic expressed doubt that one of the boys would not have run away while the abuse was taking place, or at least called out to the other people that would have surely been in the area.

Court documents report that “the two boys made some objections but did not quite yell. They were sobbing, in shock, and whimpering. During the offending, Cardinal Pell told them to be quiet, trying to stop them from crying.”

The Court of Appeals in Victoria upheld Pell’s conviction last summer. After an appellate panel announced its decision at a court proceeding Aug. 21, the cardinal was returned to prison. The Chief Justice ruled that Pell will be eligible to apply for parole after he has served three years and eight months of his six year sentence.

Pell has been held in solitary confinement, and is not permitted to celebrate Mass in prison. He has recently obtained a prison job weeding a courtyard.

Cornish said Paul Galbally, Pell’s solicitor, contacted her prior to his first trial, and they talked at length and then again later. She said she had to think through the dates at first, and then called him and told him she was not actually in an office in the sacristies at that time, but later had a full-time job and an office diagonally across the corridor from the archbishop’s sacristy. 

“I think Paul did not think my testimony would be helpful,” she said.

Sinozic also spoke to Pell’s solicitor at the beginning of the trial, but says she was never contacted after that. She said she’d agreed to testify, but said she suspects that she was not called as a witness because she wasn’t there on those actual dates.

“I think maybe they thought it wasn’t necessary, but I thought it would have given the jury a different perspective of the man if two laypeople got up, particularly women, and particularly teachers,” she commented.

“We know how to spot children who are out of place, because we did yard duty for many years and we can tell if something’s amiss. And we would have given a different side of view for the jury to perhaps reflect on. Because they were saying it’s just priests sticking up for each other— a men’s club.”

Cornish echoed Sinozic, saying that both of them dealt with every aspect of cathedral life, with Lil having been a vice principal and Jean having been a principal of a school of 1,000 children, and having dealt with pedophile cases before.

“I just think that Lillian Sinozic and I would have perhaps been able to give an overall picture long term of the workings of the cathedral from a female perspective…However I accept that at the time the lawyers probably thought we could not add anything to the picture.”

Pell’s attorneys did not respond to a CNA request for comment.

Pell’s appeal was presented on three grounds, two of which were procedural and dismissed by all three appeal judges.

The judges were divided on Pell’s primary ground of appeal, that the decision of the jury was “unreasonable.”

At particular issue was the question of whether the jury which convicted Pell had properly weighed all of the evidence presented in his defense, or reached the determination of guilt despite the demonstration of clear “reasonable doubt” that he committed the crimes with which he was charged.

Chief Justice Anne Ferguson and Court President Chris Maxwell formed the majority in favor of rejecting Pell’s appeal that the jury verdict was unreasonable on the evidence presented, finding that it was open to the jury to find beyond “reasonable doubt about the truth of the complainant’s account.”

In an extensive dissent from the majority finding, Justice Mark Weinberg noted that the entirety of the evidence against Pell consisted of the testimony of a single accuser, whereas more than 20 witnesses were produced to testify against his narrative.

Pell will appeal his conviction to the Australian High Court, exercising his last legal avenue to overturn his conviction.

“Pell comes across on TV as a bit arrogant and cold, but that’s not what he’s really like,” Sinozic said.

“And people get the wrong idea of him and just dislike him for some reason. So they were happy to blame him and use him as a scapegoat for all the other people that did something.”

Cornish also defended Pell’s character.

“Nothing will convince me that the Cardinal was capable or had tendencies towards committing this crime. A finer, more upstanding man I have never met,” she said.

“He is a man of black and white. He says what he believes, always taught what is right and is no man’s fool…He is a family man, equally at home in the presence of women, men and children.”

 

[…]

Vatican City, Feb 28, 2018 / 09:56 am (CNA).- In a recent blog post Cardinal Joseph Zen has issued another harsh critique of the rumored Vatican-China deal on the appointment of bishops, calling it an act of “suicide” and a “shameless surrender” to the communist government.

However, he said the problem isn’t necessarily the Pope, who “is optimistic and full of love, and is eager to visit China.”

Rather, he faulted the Pope’s advisors for what he said is a “bad deal,” saying they are “obsessed” with an “Ostpolitik” solution to the issue of episcopal appointments which “compromises without limits,” yet gains little in return.

Pope Francis, he said, “has never had direct knowledge of the Chinese Communist Party and, moreover, is poorly informed by the people around him.”

Specifically, Zen pointed the finger at Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, who he said was in the “diplomatic school” of his predecessor Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, who served as Vatican Secretary of State from 1979-1990.

Zen said Casaroli was “obsessed with Ostpolitik,” and called it “a sort of political compromise.”

He also said the late Cardinal Ivan Dias, formerly Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, had also been influenced by Casaroli. The Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples oversees the administration of the Church in areas designated ‘mission territories’ around the world.

Dias, who died last summer, had a “marvelous curriculum,” having been Archbishop of Bombay for nearly a decade and was familiar with the situation in Asia as a whole, Zen said.

However, the problem is that both Dias and Parolin “were perfectly in tune with the application of Ostpolitik in China, and [played] a double game against the instructions of Benedict XVI.”

Ostpolitik was the name given to the political process of pursuing the normalization of relations between the fractured German government in the late 1960s. Specifically, it aimed to patch the division between the Federal Republic of Germany of West Germany, and the German Democratic Republic of East Germany, which were split after the end of World War II in 1945.

Since then, the term Ostpolitik has also been used to describe the efforts made by Pope Paul VI to engage, through dialogue, compromise, or agreements, with Eastern European countries run by communist regimes.

Although Dias retired at the age of 75 and Parolin was named as nuncio to Venezuela in 2009, Cardinal Zen said that ever since Parolin’s re-entry into the Vatican scene as Pope Francis’ Secretary of State in 2013, he has continued to promote Casaroli’s political approach to China.

Parolin, he said, is kind and is “gifted with an extraordinary diplomatic art,” but nonetheless continues “to be obsessed with Ostpolitik…[he] willingly offers his collaboration, giving the desired information and sparing the worrying parts.”

In his view, Zen said those who back the deal want “compromise without limits, they are already willing to completely surrender.”

Based on what Pope Francis has told him and Archbishop Savio Hon, who was born in British Hong Kong and is currently apostolic nuncio to Greece, Zen said it’s clear that the Pope “didn’t know the details” of the planned deal.

“We all know that the indications of the Roman Curia are necessarily approved by the Pope,” he said, adding that faithful from the Chinese continent “do not complain about the Pope due to certain misunderstandings.”

“If he signs any deal they want, we can only accept it, without protest,” he said. “But before the eventual signing, it is our right to make the truth about things known, because this can change the direction and avoid serious dangers for the Church.”

Cardinal Zen’s latest critique was published in Chinese on his blog Feb. 24, and was translated and published in Italian on the blog of veteran Vatican analyst Sandro Magister.

The post centers on a conversation Zen had with a priest from continental China, Fr. Geng Zhanhe, responding to different points Geng apparently made in support of the deal.

Rumors of the proposed agreement have been gaining steam in recent weeks, with sources close the situation saying the accord is “imminent” and could come as early as this spring. If the deal is reached, the Vatican is expected to officially recognize seven bishops who are out of communion with Rome, including 2-3 whose excommunications have been explicitly declared by the Vatican.

Most notably, the new deal would also apparently outline government and Vatican roles in future episcopal selection. The details of the deal would reportedly be similar to the Vatican’s agreement with Vietnam, in which the Holy See would propose three names, and the Chinese government would choose the one to be appointed bishop.

Currently every bishop recognized by Beijing must be a member of the patriotic association, and many bishops appointed by the Vatican who are not recognized or approved by the Chinese government have faced government persecution.

In his blog post, Cardinal Zen criticized the fact that as one of two Chinese cardinals, he has not been made aware of the contents of the agreement. “Certainly they can’t make public all the contents of the negotiation,” he said, but as one of the two cardinals for China, “would I not have the right to know the contents?”

Yet even if the contents of the deal were commonly known, “should we just wait and hold hands and make critiques only once it’s been accomplished?”

Zen said the “democratic election” of new bishops in China by the “illegitimate episcopal conference” would mean that it is really the government who elects the prelates, so the “final word” of the Pope “cannot save his function; the formality of maintaining pontifical authority will hide the fact that the real authority to name bishops will be placed in the hands of an atheist government.”

If Francis were to sign the agreement tomorrow, Zen said he “could not criticize it,” even if he doesn’t understand the decision. But until then, “I have the duty to speak with a loud voice according to my conscience, I have the right to reiterate that this is a bad agreement!”

He noted that China is increasingly tightening its grip on religious activity in general, and pointed to a new crackdown put into place Feb. 1 which, among other things, bans anyone under 18 from attending religious services. It’s also forbidden to hold any sort of youth group activity or summer camp, even if it’s not held at a church.

Asking why the Chinese government is suddenly becoming so strict with the clandestine Church after looking the other way for many years, Zen said this is because “the Holy See is helping the authorities of the government to do this.”

Responding to the argument that if a deal is not reached the Chinese government would increasingly appoint illegitimate bishops, eventually leading to schism, Zen said having the government control the Church in China independently of the Holy See is already schismatic.

“Will it be [schismatic] with only an increased number of illegitimate bishops?” he asked. “Would it not still be worse if the Pope were to bless the bishops chosen by the government and the Church is controlled by the government?”

Zen then referred to a comment made by Fr. Geng reflecting that while it might seem unjust to ask legitimate bishops to step down in favor of those who are illegitimate, which the Vatican has done in at least two cases, it was also unjust for God the Father to ask his only Son to die on the cross.

“It’s true that the Father sacrificed the Son, but it was man who crucified him,” Zen said, and pointed to the verse in scripture when Jesus told Pilate that “those who handed me over have the greater sin.”

“All those who made him die sinned,” Zen said. “Certainly Christ could forgive them, but they didn’t become apostles.”

“Don Geng,” he said, referring to the priest and his acceptance of the deal, “does not know how to distinguish between abject sale and suffering oppression, voluntary suicide and the wound suffered, shameless surrender and unhappy failure. How sad!”

 

[…]

Kolkata, India, Jul 5, 2018 / 12:45 pm (CNA).- Two women affiliated with the Missionaries of Charity, one a religious sister and the other an employee, have been arrested in India, under suspicion of selling a baby from a shelter for unwed mothers.

Th… […]