AUSTRALIA
The Catholic Weekly
April 14, 2020
By Dr Wanda Skowronska
A vacant chair
At the final Annals lunch held on 29 November 2019 at the monastery of Sacred Heart in Kensington, Sydney , there was a vacant chair for Cardinal Pell.
Right next to this, was another vacant chair for the recently deceased Father Paul Stenhouse, who had ceaselessly called for moral and financial support for the Cardinal at every opportunity. It was not hard to imagine Fr Stenhouse doing the equivalent of an Irish jig way in heaven and, if living on earth, immediately writing up an article on the Cardinal’s vindication by the High Court for the next edition of Annals.
Yet we cannot forget the ordeal of the Cardinal in its true aspect of a Via Crucis which will become more deeply understood as time goes on.
A case that was beyond weak
It is not just that the Cardinal was falsely accused. As George Weigel put it so well, “the Crown prosecutors produced no evidence that the alleged crimes had ever been committed” while the evidence that was produced was inconsistent and flawed, beyond what could be reasonably expected with memory problems over time.
There were no witnesses to corroborate the charges and there were plenty of witnesses to swear he was with them at the very time he was supposed to have committed the alleged crime.
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