MELBOURNE: An Australian court has found Cardinal George Pell, the Vatican Treasurer and a former top adviser to Pope Francis, guilty on five charges of child sexual offences committed more than two decades ago against 13-year-old boys. A jury in the Country Court of Victoria in Melbourne had found Pell guilty on December 11, last year, following a four-week trial. He was convicted of five sexual offences committed against the 13-year-old choir boys 22 years earlier in the priests’ sacristy of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne, where Pell was archbishop. The Vatican said in December that Francis had removed Pell, 77, from his group of close advisers, without commenting on the trial. The court had issued a suppression order on the trial out of concern that a second trial Pell faced could be prejudiced by the outcome of the first case.

Source: Pakistan Today February 26, 2019 16:30 UTC