Cardinal Pell’s acquittal shames Australia’s police

The acquittal of Cardinal Pell by the Australian High Court on all the charges against him was remarkable in all sorts of ways: all seven judges agreed in near record time to the joint judgment throwing out the five charges against him and they did it after digging right into the evidence. They simply annulled the earlier verdicts by a jury and Victoria’s appellate court – though their findings resoundingly vindicate the detailed, 204-page dissident judgment by one of the three judges, Mark Weinberg, Australia’s most experienced criminal appeal court judge. The Cardinal says the verdict shouldn’t be an occasion for more bitterness; but it should be the occasion for a bit of soul-searching.

The victims’ groups whose supporters mobbed the Cardinal outside court during previous hearings with chants of ‘Pell, Pell, go to Hell’, may perhaps like to reflect that the justice system is intended to address the guilt or innocence of individuals, not a means for ventilating group grievances about abuse in general.