What to Expect if Pell is Cleared

Here’s a chilling little account of an incident that could be a portent of ugly things to come. A priest was opening the outside sacristy door of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne in preparation for a weekday evening Mass when a young man, well-dressed in a suit and to all appearances a respectable citizen, approached him from the cathedral grounds and asked if this was the sacristy. He asked if he could go in with the priest to see it. When told it was private premises and not shown to the public, the young man became aggressive and, taking out his mobile phone, began to photograph the priest. When the priest did the same to him the young man assaulted him, making off when a security guard loomed up out of the dusk.

Why did the young man want to see the sacristy? Was it morbid curiosity? Was it because one of the sacristies (there are two) was the alleged scene of the sexual assault that resulted in a senior Catholic prelate being jailed for six years (a conviction now…