What’s next for George Pell: Vatican will be charged with stripping cardinal status
George Pell’s status as a bishop means it will be the Vatican which defrocks him if his conviction stands.
George Pell will be stripped of his cardinal status and priestly rights if his legal team fails to overturn the guilty verdicts.
The task of laicising Pell rests with the Vatican because he has attained bishop status, relieving the church in Australia of the task.
Pell is still revered by many of the church hierarchy in Australia, with especially strong support from the church’s conservative wing.
His looming potential jail sentence poses a conundrum for the church’s most senior officials, who will have to determine whether it is sustainable to continue to support him, given Pell was the most senior church official in Australia and retained influence even while facing court.
His supporters will be hoping the guilty verdicts are overturned on appeal, in the manner of the former Catholic Archbishop of Adelaide Philip Wilson, who eventually escaped charges of concealing historical child sex abuse in the Hunter Valley.
Archbishop Wilson was the world’s highest-ranking Catholic to be convicted of concealing abuse until his conviction was overturned last year.
A church spokesman said: “The dismissal of a priest or bishop from the clerical state also known as laicisation is governed by the Code of Canon Law. With regard to a bishop, only the Holy See can impose laicisation as a penalty.”
“The correct term is dismissal from the clerical state. This is often described in the popular media as laicisation, or defrocking.
“This is governed by the Code of Canon Law and only occurs after all the civil processes are completed, including legal rights of appeal.’’
Rome is also expected to eventually appoint another Australian cardinal to replace Pell if his appeal fails.
Until recently, Pell remained on the Council of Cardinals, which is known as the C9 for its nine members and formed in 2013. It is the Pope’s advisory body on governance and reform.
Cardinal Pell’s role on the C9 placed him at the apex of influence in the Vatican. Once tipped as a candidate to become pope, Cardinal Pell is theoretically notionally still head of the Vatican’s Secretariat for the Economy, which runs the church’s multibillion-dollar finances.
However, there is virtually no chance now of him returning to the position, even if his appeal is successful, chiefly because the pope has embarked on a campaign of distancing himself from offenders and of trying to address the breadth of the problem worldwide.
Pell’s health also has suffered somewhat as the 77-year-old has endured relentless pressure for 18 months, since being charged with child sex offences.
The Pope has become increasingly hardline in his approach to the abuse issue, having defrocked the elderly former US cardinal Theodore McCarrick after the church found him guilty of sexual abuse.
The Vatican said a canonical process had found McCarrick, a prominent Washington figure, guilty of soliciting sex during confession and committing sins with children and adults. He is the former archbishop of Washington.
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