Catholic leaders appeal for help after Jesuit school in India attacked

Khamba Nomun Khan, the head of the Gandan Monastery in Ulaanbaatar, accompanied Pope Francis as he made his entrance at the interreligious dialogue event at the Hun Theater in Mongolia on Sept. 3, 2023. / Vatican Media

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Melbourne, Australia, Mar 5, 2019 / 03:17 pm (CNA).- Robert Richter, Cardinal George Pell’s defense lawyer, said Tuesday that he has not quit the prelate’s legal team. A Melbourne daily had earlier reported Richter will not be part of the appeals process.

Richter told the AAP March 5, “I have not quit. I do not quit.”

Pell, prefect emeritus of the Vatican’s Secretariat for the Economy, was convicted in December on five counts of sexual abuse stemming from charges that he sexually assaulted two choirboys while serving as Archbishop of Melbourne in 1996. He has maintained his innocence, is appealing his conviction.

It was the cardinal’s second trial, as a jury in an earlier trial had failed to reach a unanimous verdict. The first jury were deadlocked 10-2 in Pell’s favor.

At a pre-trial hearing, Richter had noted that Victoria Police had launched an investigation of Pell in 2013, searching for complainants, calling it “an operation looking for a crime because no crime had been reported.”

Though he will remain on Pell’s legal team, Richter will not be leading it through the appeal.

Paul Galbally, Pell’s solicitor, said that “In these particular circumstances, Richter questions whether he has sufficient objectivity at this stage to take the appeal forward himself.”

He added that “As Cardinal Pell is well aware, Richter is still very much part of the legal team and will be involved right through to the end.”

Pell’s appeal will by led by barrister Bret Walker SC, who will be assisted by Richter, Galbally, and Ruth Shann, Richter’s junior barrister.

The Age had reported earlier March 5 that Richter “felt he did not have ‘sufficient objectivity at this stage’ to participate in the challenge set to be heard in Victoria’s Court of Appeal.”

He told the Melbourne outlet, “I am very angry about the verdict, because it was perverse”, and that Pell would be “better served by someone more detached”.

“I think the man is an innocent man and he’s been convicted. It’s not a common experience,” Richter said.

According to The Age, Pell’s appeal will be made on three points: the jury’s reliance on the evidence of a single victim, an irregularity that kept Pel from entering his not guilty plea in front of the jury, and the defense not being allowed to show a visual representation supporting his claim of innocence.

The appeal document, The Age reported, says that “the verdicts are unreasonable and cannot be supported, having regard to the evidence, because on the whole of the evidence, including unchallenged exculpatory evidence from more than 20 Crown witnesses, it was not open to the jury to be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt on the word of the complainant alone.”

The news of Pell’s conviction has met with varied reactions.  While many figures in Australian media have applauded Pell’s conviction, some Australians have called it into question, prompting considerable debate across the country.

Greg Craven, vice-chancellor of the Australian Catholic University, suggested that the justice process was tainted by media and police forces that had worked “to blacken the name” of Pell “before he went to trial.”

“This is not a story about whether a jury got it right or wrong, or about whether justice is seen to prevail,” Craven said in a Feb. 27 opinion piece in The Australian. “It’s a story about whether a jury was ever given a fair chance to make a decision, and whether our justice system can be heard above a media mob.”

Speaking on an Australian television program March 4, Australian Labor senator Kristina Keneally said those criticizing the verdict were “doing a disservice to our democratic jury system,” adding, “I think it’s disrespectful of the jury verdict … I would also reflect it’s quite disrespectful of victims.”

A university employees’ union representative at the ACU wrote to the school’s chancellor saying staff “have expressed dismay or repugnance” at Craven’s actions.

Dr. Leah Kaufmann, a senior lecturer in psychology, wrote that Craven’s questioning of the verdict “shows a disregard” for concerns regarding child safeguarding and “supporting survivors of sexual abuse.”

On this basis Kaufmann asked that Craven be sanctioned, charging him with “lack of consideration of victims.”

She also asked that the Pell Centre at the school’s Ballarat campus be renamed, and that his portrait be removed from a location at the North Sydney campus.

The Australian reported that an ACU spokeswoman responded that the school respects employees’ rights to comment as a matter of intellectual freedom, saying Craven “made comment on the trial as a constitutional lawyer and former Victorian Crown Counsel.”

Pell is incarcerated at the Melbourne Assessment Prison while he awaits the results of a sentencing hearing, which will be announced March 13.

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Kochi, India, Oct 28, 2019 / 06:01 pm (CNA).- Sister Lucy Kalapura, whose dismissal from religious life was upheld by the Congregation for the Oriental Churches last month, has sent a letter asking that her case be further appealed before the Aposotolic Signatura.

She was dismissed from the Franciscan Clarist Congregation in August for several acts of disobedience, including a protest of the handling of another nun’s accusation that Bishop Mulakkal of Jullundur serially raped her.

“I am deeply obliged for providing me the opportunity for a further appeal to the Supreme Tribunal of the Signatura Apostolica. It is desired, in this connection, that an opportunity be granted to me to appear in person before the Tribunal to enable me to present to its honourable members my side of the situation,” Sister Lucy wrote in an Oct. 25 letter to Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, prefect of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches.

She also asked that she be able to present her case to Pope Francis.

According to the FCC, Sr. Lucy has led a life against the principles of religious life by disobeying a transfer order, publishing poems after having been denied permission to do so, buying a vehicle, withholding her salary from the congregation, and participating in a protest against Bishop Mulakkal, who has been charged with several instances of raping a nun of a different congregation.

Bishop Mulakkal was charged with rape in April, and his trial is due to begin Nov. 11. A nun of the Missionaries of Jesus alleged that the bishop sexually abused her more than a dozen times over two years.

In her letter to Cardinal Sandri, Sr. Lucy said, according to News 18, that “what purports to be ‘disciplinary action’, and what in reality are reprisals, against me commenced only after I stood by the sisters of the Missionaries of Jesus in their efforts to secure justice for the outraged nun.”

“I wish to urge strenuously that the actions initiated against me, and the vindictiveness it reeks of, cannot be understood aright, if they are seen in isolation from the Franco Mulakkal matter as the trigger,” she added.

Sr. Lucy wrote that she is “a collateral victim of this Franco Mulakkal scandal, in regard to which the mettle of the Church’s commitment to truth and justice is being tested in full public view.”

She charged that “it does not have to be argued that the Holy See being made to be seen as partisan in this case, or as hostile to justice being available to a rape victim, is sure to discredit the witness and integrity of the Catholic Church for the years to come.”
The community’s superior general, Sr. Ann Joseph, wrote in August that Sr. Lucy “did not show the needed remorse and you failed to give a satisfactory explanation for your lifestyle in violation of the proper law of the FCC.”
Sr. Lucy said that the FCC’s charges of disobedience are a “deliberate attempt to paint her in bad light”.
In a January letter of warning sent to Sr. Lucy, Sr. Ann wrote that the nun had joined a protest regarding Bishop Mulakkal “without the permission of your superior. You have published articles in some non-Christian newspapers and weeklies … gave interviews to ‘Samayam’ without seeking permission from the provincial superior. Through Facebook, channel discussions and the articles, you belittled the Catholic leadership by making false accusations against it and tried to bring down the sacraments. You tried to defame FCC also. Your performance through social media as a religious sister was culpable, arising grave scandal.”

The letter also said Sr. Lucy failed to obey a transfer order given her in 2015 by her provincial superior, and that she published a book of poems despite being denied permission to do so, and used 50,000 Indian rupees ($700) from the congregation’s account “without proper permission” to do so.

Sr. Lucy is also accused of buying a car for about $5,670 and learning to drive without permission, and failing to entrust her salary from December 2017.

Sr. Ann called these acts “a grave infringement of the vow of poverty.”
The superior general added that Sr. Lucy has been corrected and warned several times by her provincial over her “improper behaviour and violations of religious discipline.”

“Instead of correcting yourself, you are simply denying the allegations against you stating that you have to live your own beliefs, ideologies and conviction. You are repeatedly violating the vows of obedience and poverty. The evangelization and social work you do should be according to the FCC values, principles and rules. The present mode of your life is a grave violation of the profession you have made,” Sr. Ann wrote.

After the denial of Sr. Lucy’s initial appeal was communicated to her earlier this month, she told the BBC that “I don’t see any point” in further recourse to the Apostolic Signatura, “since they have made up their mind.”

She maintained: “I am not going to leave the convent. The lifestyle I lead is as per the rules and regulations.”

Sr. Lucy was sent a series of warnings from January through March. The first asked that she appear before Sr. Ann to explain her disobediences, or face expulsion from the congregation.

In January Sr. Lucy said that the congregation was trying to silence her, and denied any wrongdoing.

In May the FCC’s General Council voted unanimously to dismiss Sr. Lucy.

Another nun of the FCC, Sister Lissy Vadakkel, was transferred earlier this year from Muvattupuzha to Vijawada.

Sister Alphonas Abraham, superior of the FCC’s Nirmala Province, said in February that Sr. Lissy’s transfer was unrelated to her acting as a witness in the case against Bishop Mulakkal.

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