Cardinal George Pell says when it comes to October’s Synod of Bishops on the Family, “the synod will massively endorse the tradition” of the Church’s teachings on marriage. He believes synod delegates “will recognize that the Christian tradition of St. John Paul the Great, Benedict, the Council of Trent, is well established … and I Read more
The Catholic Church in Australia set aside tens of millions of dollars to compensate sexual abuse victims years before it publicly admitted the problem. The Sunday Age reported that a warning was issued by a church insurer to the nation’s bishops as early as 1988. This was more than seven years before the Melbourne Response Read more
Artist Shen Jiawei’s paintings of Chinese soldiers during the Cultural Revolution were so popular with Mao’s regime that 250,000 copies of his most famous work were made into propaganda posters and distributed throughout the country. Four decades later, Shen now has a different patron commissioning his work: He has become, somewhat inexplicably, the unofficial portrait Read more
Pope Francis has moved to confirm the authority of Cardinal George Pell in cleaning up the Vatican’s finances. In a new set of legislative norms approved by the Pope, the Secretariat for the Economy, headed by Cardinal Pell, has been given sweeping powers. Francis appears to have largely put aside recommendations from the Pontifical Council Read more
An Italian magazine has published alleged details of lavish spending by the Vatican’s Secretariat for the Economy, headed by Cardinal George Pell. But the secretariat has strongly rejected the claims published in L’Espresso magazine. Basing its reports on alleged leaked receipts from the secretariat, L’Espresso claimed the cardinal spent $A720,000 in setting up his new department. It Read more
Australia’s royal commission looking at institutional responses to child sex abuse has backed the way sacked Toowoomba Bishop William Morris handled a case. Fr Frank Brennan, SJ, writing for the ABC, noted how this is in stark contrast to how the commission lambasted Cardinal George Pell’s handling of the case of abuse victim John Ellis. This Read more
The cardinal who heads the Vatican’s economic oversight body has questioned the releasing of Vatican asset figures to the media by Cardinal George Pell. Earlier this month, Cardinal Pell, who is prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy, told media the Vatican had US$1.5 billion in assets that had not been previously accounted for. German Read more
The Vatican has more than US$1.5 billion in assets that it didn’t previously know it had, bringing its total assets to more than US$3billion. Cardinal George Pell, the Vatican’s secretary for the economy, told cardinals last week that $0.5 billion in assets had been purposefully excluded from a 2013 overall balance sheet. And US$1billion should Read more
Reports released by an Australian royal commission have condemned the way the Catholic Church acted towards sexual abuse victims in several cases. On February 11, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse released reports on the John Ellis case and on the Church’s Towards Healing protocol. The four cases dealt with in Read more
Anthony Fisher, the new Archbishop of Sydney, is at odds with the Church’s Truth Justice and Healing Council. In an opinion piece in the Australian newspaper, Monday, Archbishop Fisher seemed to distance himself from the Council’s view that “Obligatory celibacy may also have contributed to abuse in some circumstances”. The Truth Justice and Healing Council Read more