Cardinal George Pell, Vatican treasurer and the third most powerful person in the Vatican have been found guilty on five charges of child sexual abuse committed more than twenty years ago against 13-year-old boys in Australia. He is regarded as one of the most senior Catholic clerics to be declared guilty of child sex offences.

The joint verdict was delivered by a jury on 11th December; however, the result was subject to a suppression order. On Tuesday, the guilty verdict was made public following the cancellation of a court suppression order on Pell’s 2018 trial, after a second abuse case against him was discarded by the prosecution.

The deposition of the Vatican’s No.3 official brings to the heart of the papal administration a scandal over clerical abuse that has destroyed the Church’s trustworthiness in the United States, Australia, Chile and elsewhere over the last thirty years.

After a four-week trial, a jury in the County Court of Victoria in Melbourne found Pell guilty on Dec. 11 last year. Pell, who is on leave from his role in Rome as Vatican treasurer, was found guilty of sexually penetrating a child below the age of 16 as well as on four charges of conducting an obscene act with a child under the age of 16. The offences took place in December 1996 and early 1997 at St Patrick’s Cathedral, months after Pell was introduced as the archbishop of Melbourne. One of the two victims died in 2014.

He is scheduled to be sentenced next week but might be taken into custody for a plea hearing on 27th February, has been out on bail since the judgement and recovering from knee surgery. Each of these five offences carries a maximum punishment of 10 years in jail. Pell’s lawyers have registered an appeal against the verdict on three grounds, which if gets successful could head to a retrial.