Australia rules out funerals with honors for Cardinal George Pell out of respect for victims

The Australian states of New South Wales and Victoria have ruled out holding honorary funerals for the Australian cardinal on Thursday. George Pellconvicted and later acquitted of pedophilia, out of respect for the surviving victims of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.

LOOK: Australian Cardinal George Pell, former right-hand man of the Pope in the Vatican and acquitted of pedophilia, dies

“There will be no memorial service or state funeral because that would be very distressing for every surviving victim of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church” Australian, stressed Daniel Andrews, governor of the state of Victoria, where pell He was originally from and where numerous abuses of minors were committed when he was a priest there.

For his part, the Governor of New South Wales, Dominic Perrottet, confirmed today that a state funeral will not be held in that territory for the cardinal who died on Tuesday night, and reported that there will simply be a religious service that is being organized by the archdiocese, undated at the moment.

The Australian cardinal, named Vatican Prefect of the Economy in 2014, died in Rome, where a mass will be celebrated in his honor before he is repatriated to Australia.

the figure of pellwho was the highest-ranking Catholic in his country, is marked by sexual abuse of minors committed within the Australian church and causes enormous division.

pell He was born in Ballarat, some 110 kilometers west of Melbourne -the capital of Victoria-, and returned to the city to be a priest and begin his long career that led him to the Archbishopric of Melbourne (1996) and Sydney (2001).

A government commission studying abuse by clergymen said in 2015 that as many as 14 priests in Ballarat had sexually abused children and that there had been at least 130 substantiated complaints since 1980.

This official investigation, which received some 4,500 complaints against more than 1,800 religious for sexual abuse committed in the country between 1985 and 2015, determined in 2017 that pell he was “aware” of the problem in the Church.

Something that the cardinal always denied, despite acknowledging that in the 1980s there was “a world of crimes and cover-ups” in the Catholic Church to protect the institution.

Andrews, who offered his condolences to friends and family of pelltoday reminded the victims of abuse.

“We believe you, we support you and you are at the center not only of our thoughts, not only of our words, but also of our actions,” the governor remarked at a press conference.

Meanwhile, this Thursday a mass was held in memory of pell in the cathedral of Saint Patrick in his native Ballarat, collects the public channel ABC.

pellwho spent thirteen months in prison after his first sentence in 2018 for sexually abusing two minors in the 1990s until he was acquitted in April 2020, will be buried in St. Mary’s Cathedral, in Sydney, in a date yet to be determined.

Neither the authorities of New South Wales, whose capital is Sydney, nor the federal government have announced a state funeral for the Australian religious.

Source: Elcomercio

jack

I am Jack Morton and I work in 24 News Recorder. I mostly cover world news and I have also authored 24 news recorder. I find this work highly interesting and it allows me to keep up with current events happening around the world.