Cardinal Pell to Becciu: What was that $2M payment actually for?
Catholic News Agency, Dec 17, 2021
Cardinal George Pell says that he does not harbor any ill will toward the man whose sexual assault accusation sent the Australian prelate to prison for 13 months, but he still wants to know why the Vatican sent more than $2 million to Australia during his trial.
Pell, the former archbishop of Sydney and the prefect emeritus of the Secretariat for the Economy, was released from prison on April 7, 2020, after the Australian High Court unanimously found that the jury which convicted him on Dec. 11, 2018 should not have found him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
Pell was initially found guilty of sexually assaulting two choirboys in 1996, a claim he had always denied. He was freed 13 months into a six-year sentence.
Since being freed, Pell has published his prison diaries in a series of volumes. His latest, “Prison Journal, Volume 3: The High Court Frees an Innocent Man,” was published by Ignatius Press on Nov. 2, 2021.