Cardinal Pell Has One Question for Cardinal Becciu: ‘Will He Just Tell Us What the Money Was Sent for?’ by Joan Frawley Desmond

The former prefect of the Vatican’s Secretariat for the Economy sat down for an interview on his three-volume ‘Prison Journal’ touching on his incarceration, Cardinal Becciu and Vatican finances.

By Joan Frawley Desmond, EWTN News, December 16, 2021

Joan Frawley Desmond Joan Frawley Desmond, is the Register’s senior editor. She is an award-winning journalist widely published in Catholic, ecumenical and secular media. A graduate of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies of Marriage and Family, she lives with her family in California.

When Cardinal George Pell took a leave of absence in 2018 from his post as the inaugural prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy and returned to Australia to stand trial for his “historic sexual abuse” case, he was the highest ranking Church official to be swept up in a decades-long global scandal that has shattered victims and wreaked havoc on the Church’s moral credibility.

Convicted in 2018, he would spend 402 days in prison, mostly in solitary confinement, before his guilty verdict was overturned by Australia’s highest court in 2020.

During his incarceration, the former archbishop of Melbourne from 1996-2001 and of Sydney from 2001–2014 was barred from celebrating the Mass, forcing him to dig deep into his faith and prayer life.  …