A just man’s lot

Justice, Victoria-style, as seen from abroad:

Cardinal George Pell was exactly where he should have been Wednesday night in Melbourne: in jail.

Let Henry David Thoreau explain: “Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison” (Civil Disobedience).

Now that the peculiar “suppression order” in Australia has been lifted, we are free to state what has been evident for several years now. The prosecution of Cardinal Pell has been a monstrous miscarriage of justice, a religious persecution carried out by prosecutorial means.

Cardinal Pell was convicted last December for sexually assaulting two 13-year-old boys in 1996. The process that led to the convictions was, from the start, a sustained and calculated strategy to corrupt the criminal-justice system toward politically motivated ends.

And now Cardinal Pell is in jail, awaiting his sentencing next month. There is no shame that Cardinal Pell is in jail; the shame is sufficiently abundant to be worn by all those who put him there…

Fr. Raymond de Souza’s j’accuse continues at America’s National Catholic Register