Sexual abuse condemned George Pell, ex-right of Pope Francis

Australian Cardinal George Pell, former Vatican number three and ex-right-wing Pope Francis, was sentenced to six years in prison for abuses against children.

Judge Peter Kidd, of a court in the Australian city of Melbourne, said he took into account the crimes to define the sentence. "horrible" and the advanced age (77 years) of the religious. In the 1990s, Pell was punishable by a maximum sentence of 50 years for abusing two choir boys from his church.

The priest, who insists on his innocence, appeared in Australian court after being convicted of five bad crimes against two children in 1996 and 1997.

The religious – dressed in a black shirt, but without the traditional white clerical collar – remained seated and impbadive, while Judge Kidd described the attacks on the two boys at the altar. "He will not live long enough to be released"said the magistrate, reading the sentence.

In addition, the cardinal was forced to sign the bad offender registry and must serve a minimum sentence of three years and eight months in jail at the end of his six-year general sentence.

He was considered guilty of stalling the two children, then 13, who attended the prestigious St. Kevin School, and mistreated them in December 1996. It was not the only time: the attack was repeated with one of the two children just two months later.

"There is an additional level of degradation and humiliation that each of its victims must have felt to know that the violence they suffered was seen by the other," said the judge. .

One of the young victims of abuse died of a heroin overdose in 2014. Pell is the highest representative of the Catholic hierarchy to have been found guilty of badual abuse on minors . Until recently, I was responsible for the Vatican's finances.

This Wednesday, however, Judge Kidd insisted that he was Cardinal Pell and not the Vatican that had been condemned.