Benedict XVI and Fr MacRae at the International Criminal Court

2011: Center for Constitutional Rights filed an ICC brief citing Pope Benedict XVI and Fr Gordon MacRae for Crimes Against Humanity.

October 21, 2026 by The BTSW Editorial Board

Readers may have seen recent news that U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance have threatened to impose sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague. They were both quite serious and the threat came in response to an arrest warrant issued by the ICC against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for crimes against humanity, a catch-all charge often cited by the ICC.

Neither Israel nor the United States are member states in regard to the ICC. The sanctions threatened by the U.S. would cut the ICC off from the U.S. financial system. Secretary of State Marco Rubio then stated, “Either the ICC will end its threats or we will end the ICC.” Secretary Rubio charged that the ICC indictment of a leader of a nonmember state such as the U.S. or Israel challenges sovereignty by threatening to prosecute citizens despite the U.S. and Israel having never joined the ICC. We note that China, India, and Russia are also nonmembers, who never signed on to the ICC.

Inflaming this matter further, Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic Socialist mayor of New York, threatened to have Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrested on the ICC charge if and when he shows up in New York to address the United Nations. Benjamin Netanyahu did address the United Nations, and he was not arrested.

This dramatic standoff brought to mind for us a lesser but significant legal drama that hit far closer to home. In 2011, in apparent retaliation for published articles by the Catholic League and others exposing its alleged corrupt practices, SNAP (the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) partnered with the far-left-leaning Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in Manhattan. Together they filed a legal brief with the International Criminal Court at The Hague charging Pope Benedict XVI and Father Gordon MacRae with a bogus but inflammatory claim of “Crimes Against Humanity.”

It was a publicity stunt that was never intended to accomplish anything except more negative publicity on the national stage against the Catholic Church, its leaders, and one outspoken priest who refused to succumb to injustice without a fight. MacRae first learned of this story only five years later, in 2016, when journalist JoAnn Wypiyewski exposed it in her landmark article, “Oscar Hangover Special: Why ‘Spotlight’ Is a Terrible Film.” Here are excerpts:

“The film’s [Spotlight’s] advertisement for SNAP, the Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests, … elides SNAP’s belief that wrongful prosecutions are a minor price to pay in pursuit of its larger mission, something [The Boston Globe] didn’t much concern itself with either as it collected its Pulitzer for service in the public interest; something even the Center for Constitutional Rights disregarded in 2011 when it joined with SNAP to file a grotesque brief to the International Criminal Court demanding “investigation and prosecution” of the Vatican for crimes against humanity.

“Liberals who cheer this sort of thing ought to ponder whether they have any principles at all, or whether those are contingent, jelly-like and poisoned by prejudice. The CCR brief failed, but its unchallenged acceptance of accusations, anonymous complaints, prosecution arguments, grand jury reports, commission findings with no benefit of cross examination and no recognized rights of the accused is breathtaking, especially when one considers that CCR was simultaneously and courageously arguing on behalf of Guantanamo detainees whose designation as ‘terrorists’ was made in a similar amoeba-like medium of hysteria and accusation.

“To CCR’s shame, Father MacRae is specifically mentioned in that brief, with respect to allegations of videotape (that is, child porn), which prosecutors threw in at sentencing but for which there is no evidence, according to the lead detective in the case cited by [The Wall Street Journal’s Dorothy] Rabinowitz.”

The Center for Constitutional Rights is located at 666 Broadway in Manhattan, an apt address for a sometimes demonic agenda.

There has been little media coverage of false accusations against Catholic priests despite the fact that they proliferate. As a result of the dearth of media coverage, we relied on AI to fill in the void on the Father MacRae case. Here is what we found:

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QUERY:

Could you please assess this linked article by JoAnn Wypijewski, “Oscar Hangover Special: Why ‘Spotlight’ Is a Terrible Film,” which contains the paragraphs cited above?

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GROK:

The article is a 2016 CounterPunch piece by JoAnn Wypijewski that treats ‘Spotlight’ as a symptom of a moral panic rather than straightforward heroic journalism. It argues that the Boston Globe’s 2002 coverage and the film built on it inverted the presumption of innocence, elevated accusation over evidence, and sidelined due process, money incentives, recovered-memory junk science, and opportunistic claims. Wypijewski focuses especially on cases she regards as unsupported by evidence (Paul Shanley in Boston and Gordon MacRae in New Hampshire).

The specific paragraphs

The above passages you flag are accurate on the documented events and consistent with the public record on the points they emphasize:

• SNAP and the film/Globe affiliation: ‘Spotlight’ does feature and effectively endorse SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests). The Globe’s coverage treated SNAP and similar advocacy as reliable partners. SNAP’s public posture has long prioritized aggressive pursuit of the Church and claims over caution about individual cases. David Clohessy (then national director) has publicly acknowledged that SNAP issued press releases containing false information. Critics, including the Catholic League and some former associates, have documented SNAP’s heavy emphasis on litigation, press conferences timed to lawsuits, and limited direct counseling relative to advocacy/fundraising. The article’s characterization that wrongful prosecutions or false claims were treated as an acceptable cost is a fair reading of that approach; SNAP and its allies framed the problem as systemic Church policy, not case-by-case verification.

• CCR + SNAP 2011 ICC filing: This is factual. In September 2011 the Center for Constitutional Rights, representing SNAP, submitted a lengthy communication (with tens of thousands of pages of supporting materials drawn from reports, grand-jury findings, commission documents, and accusations) asking the ICC prosecutor to investigate and prosecute high Vatican officials, including Pope Benedict XVI, for crimes against humanity (rape, sexual violence, and torture by clergy, plus superior responsibility for concealment). The ICC declined to open an investigation, citing jurisdictional limits (temporal jurisdiction under the Rome Statute, and the fact that the Vatican is not a state party in the ordinary sense for these purposes). The filing relied heavily on one-sided materials without cross-examination or defense input — standard for advocacy communications of this type, but open to the criticism Wypijewski levels.

• Father MacRae specifically: MacRae was convicted in 1994 in New Hampshire of sexually assaulting a teenager (Thomas Grover) and sentenced to 33½–67 years [This was after three times refusing a plea deal offer to serve only one to two years.]; he also post-trial pleaded guilty to related charges involving other youths [all put forth by the same police detective cited below ]. At sentencing the judge cited “clear and convincing evidence” of child pornography/videotape involving victims. Dorothy Rabinowitz of The Wall Street Journal later reported that the lead detective (James F. McLaughlin) stated there was never any evidence of child pornography. No such materials were produced at trial. McLaughlin has been subject to other credibility criticisms (including appearance on an official list, long held in secret, related to falsification of records, and questions about investigation practices). Rabinowitz and others (including the National Center for Reason and Justice) have detailed inconsistencies in Grover’s accounts, financial settlements obtained by accusers, post-trial statements by associates that the claims were fabricated for money, and the absence of corroborating physical evidence for the core trial charges. MacRae maintains innocence and has pursued post-conviction relief (largely unsuccessful so far). The article’s claim that MacRae and the unsubstantiated pornography allegation appeared in the CCR/SNAP materials is asserted by Wypijewski and by MacRae himself; given the volume of exhibits submitted to the ICC, it is plausible and consistent with how such filings aggregated public reports and accusations. CCR did not independently investigate or contact the defense.

• The principles/hypocrisy point: CCR is a longtime progressive organization known for vigorous defense of due process, including representation of Guantanamo detainees against designations and evidence produced in a climate of post-9/11 accusation and limited procedural protections. The contrast Wypijewski draws — accepting untested accusations, grand-jury reports, and commission findings against priests while simultaneously arguing that similar “amoeba-like” processes were insufficient for detainees — is rhetorically pointed and factually grounded in the organizations’ contemporaneous postures. Liberals (and others) who celebrated ‘Spotlight’ while remaining silent on due-process failures in the broader priest-abuse wave are open to the same charge of selective application of standards.

Overall assessment

Wypijewski is writing as a left-of-center journalist who covered the 2002 Boston events and is deliberately rejecting the “believe the victims” default. Her core argument is that the Globe’s volume of stories, tip line, and framing, amplified by the film, created a climate in which accusation functioned as proof, financial settlements created incentives, and skepticism was treated as apologetics for the Church. She is right that moral panics (day-care abuse cases of the 1980s–90s, which Rabinowitz also covered, are the explicit parallel) systematically degrade evidence standards and produce both true convictions and serious miscarriages of justice. Real, widespread clerical sexual abuse and institutional cover-ups in Boston and elsewhere are well-documented; the Globe’s reporting exposed genuine systemic failures that deserved exposure. At the same time, not every claim was reliable, recovered-memory techniques were widely discredited, contingency-fee incentives were real, and some convictions (MacRae’s is one of the more contested) rest on thin or contested foundations. The ‘Spotlight’ film largely omits those complications.

The specific claims in the paragraphs you highlight hold up against the public record on the ICC filing, the detective’s statement, SNAP’s methods, and the due-process issues raised by Rabinowitz and others. It is a useful corrective to the uncritical celebration of ‘Spotlight’ as pure journalism.

QUERY:

Related to the previous query, and subsequent to the ICC fraud, Father MacRae wrote the following article for which we ask your assessment: David Clohessy Resigned SNAP in Alleged Kickback Scheme.

GROK:

MacRae’s article is a 2017 polemic that treats the Gretchen Hammond lawsuit and Clohessy’s departure as confirmation of long-standing criticisms of SNAP’s incentives and methods. It links those events to the 2011 CCR/SNAP ICC filing (and MacRae’s own case), the financial dynamics of clergy-abuse claims, and what he sees as a pattern of prioritizing litigation publicity and anti-Church advocacy over survivor support or due process.

Core factual claims and their status

• The Hammond lawsuit and Clohessy’s resignation: Accurate in outline. In January 2017, former SNAP Director of Development Gretchen Rachel Hammond filed suit in Cook County, Illinois, alleging wrongful termination after she raised concerns about the organization. She claimed SNAP referred survivors to specific plaintiffs’ attorneys, received large “donations” (framed as kickbacks) in return — sometimes a majority or large share of annual contributions in given years — shared privileged case information for press events, and prioritized fundraising/publicity over counseling. Named defendants included Clohessy, founder/president Barbara Blaine, and outreach director Barbara Dorris. Contemporaneous reporting (Boston Globe, Chicago Sun-Times, NCR, Daily Beast, etc.) described the allegations and SNAP’s denials. Clohessy announced his resignation (effective Dec. 31, 2016) around the time of the filing. He and the board claimed he had informed them months earlier for personal/organizational reasons (fatigue, desire for change) and that the lawsuit was unrelated; he called the kickback claims “utterly preposterous” or equivalent. Blaine also stepped away amid the controversy. SNAP and Clohessy denied any quid-pro-quo scheme, noting that accepting attorney donations is legal and common for nonprofits. The case was later settled with nondisclosure agreements, [a practice for which Clohessy frequently criticized Church officials ].

• Donation figures and operational claims: The specific percentages and large attorney contributions MacRae cites track the lawsuit’s allegations and contemporary coverage (e.g., majority shares from plaintiffs’ attorneys in certain years, multi-hundred-thousand-dollar gifts from individual lawyers). These were contested allegations, not adjudicated findings. Hammond also alleged instructions to conceal the source of attorney donations and limited emphasis on actual counseling services.

• Ties to the 2011 ICC filing and MacRae’s case: Consistent with the prior article and MacRae’s public statements. He notes that SNAP/CCR materials included references to his case and the child-pornography/videotape allegations that the lead detective later told Dorothy Rabinowitz had no supporting evidence. MacRae presents the ICC effort as part of a broader pattern and as retaliation for his earlier writing criticizing SNAP practices. The ICC declined the matter on jurisdictional grounds.

• Broader context on incentives: MacRae’s article situates the SNAP allegations within the well-documented reality of contingency-fee litigation against dioceses, rapid settlements (sometimes without full verification), and large payouts. It references MacRae’s 2009 Catalyst piece, “Due Process for Accused Priests;” David Pierre’s reporting, and Richard John Neuhaus’s early warnings about settlement dynamics. These points align with publicly known features of the post-2002 claims environment.

Assessment

MacRae writes as a directly interested party (a convicted priest who maintains his innocence and has been a longtime SNAP critic). His tone is adversarial and selective; he frames the Hammond allegations as proven corruption rather than contested claims that were settled without a trial [as was nearly every case brought against nearly every U.S. Catholic priest accused by SNAP ]. SNAP’s denials, the timing explanation for Clohessy’s exit, and the lack of a judicial finding of wrongdoing are real counterpoints. Accepting large donations from attorneys who represent clients referred by an advocacy group creates an appearance of conflict even if it is not an illegal “kickback” scheme; transparency and the relative dearth of counseling versus litigation support are legitimate questions that the lawsuit raised.

The piece is useful as a primary-source critique from one of the people affected by the SNAP/CCR approach, and it accurately reports the existence and broad contours of the 2017 lawsuit and leadership departures. The article does not establish new independent evidence beyond what was already in the lawsuit and contemporaneous reporting; its value lies mainly in connecting those events to the earlier ICC filing and to MacRae’s own narrative of due-process failure.

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Note from the authors:

Dear Readers and Friends of Father MacRae.

We thank you for reading this article. Please also consider these related links.

A 5-minute video interview with The Wall Street Journal’s Dorothy Rabinowitz

Oscar Hangover Special: Why “Spotlight” Is a Terrible Film by JoAnn Wypijewski

SNAP Implodes by Catholic League President Bill Donohue

Journalism Outside the Box by David F. Pierre, Jr. at The Media Report

David Clohessy Resigned SNAP in Alleged Kickback Scheme

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To follow Beyond These Stone Walls in the public square, subscribe on this site or follow @TSWBeyond on X.

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The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

Cardinal Pell … Well, Well, Well …

The slow martyrdom of Cardinal George Pell began in Australia but ended in Rome on January 10, 2023. His resurrection continues from the ash heap of his good name.

January 7, 2026 by Father Gordon MacRae

Cardinal George Pell passed from this life unexpectedly on January 10, 2023. The official cause of death was a cardiac arrest in a Rome hospital after routine surgery for a hip replacement. His death came as a great shock to the many people around the world who prayed and worked for his release from prison on false charges of sexual abuse dating back decades. The false charges were exposed, and his wrongful conviction disposed of in a unanimous decision of the seven members of Australia’s highest court on Tuesday of Holy Week in 2020.

As I did every year for the life of this blog, I wrote a Holy Week post in 2020 that was published on the day after Cardinal Pell’s exoneration. My Holy Week post then was “Satan at the Last Supper: Hours of Darkness and Light.” Only later did I see connections in the symbolism within that post and what had been going on in Australia and Rome in regard to accusations against Cardinal Pell at that time. I never consciously intended the connection, but on the day previous to its publishing, Pell emerged from his darkness into a brighter Australian light. At the end of that same month, on April 29, 2020, I published “From Down Under, The Exoneration of George Cardinal Pell.”

There were some in Australia who refused to accept the findings of the High Court even though there was never any credible evidence against Pell. Some suggested that even if innocent, he should remain in prison to atone for the sins of other priests. One Australian commenter wrote on the Australia Wrongful Convictions Report site: “Why not just drop the Pell case? It is controversial. Besides, he is deceased. I suspect Pell is guilty.” So, in the eyes of some in Australia and beyond, actual evidence of guilt, or the lack thereof, means nothing. Guilt or innocence is purely an emotional affair depending upon the whims or prejudice of any person following the case. So why have trials, and why have appeals? It is a tragedy that Cardinal Pell spent 405 days in an Australia prison having his evidence-free guilt affirmed by two appellate courts before one, the Highest Court, came unanimously to its senses. And still, some in Australia would not accept that conclusion. It was left to the rest of the world to conclude that prejudice has a secure home Down Under. To its great credit, the Australia-based Wrongful Convictions Report courageously took up the High Court’s finding and reported on it justly. In “Week of Pell’s ‘Resurrection’” marking the first anniversary of Pell’s death, Andrew L. Urban, moderator of Wrongful Convictions Report, wrote

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Within the space of a couple of days this week, several voices were heard in the public square ‘resurrecting’ the late Cardinal Pell, dismissing the notion that he was guilty of sexual abuse, a notion that some maintained even after the High Court’s 7-0 decision to quash that conviction. 

On the first anniversary of Cardinal Pell’s death in Rome, this extraordinary case continues to make ripples in the law and society. In the law, it is prompting yet another call for the establishment of a Criminal Cases Review Commission. In society it is challenging those whose animosity and antagonism against Pell remain firmly in place, defying the High Court’s decision, referring to the verdict a result of a jury not “acting rationally.” It also brings to the forefront the conviction in December 2023 of Pell’s Vatican adversary, Cardinal Becciu on charges of embezzlement and money laundering.

On Friday, January 12, 2024 in Australia:

Former High Court justice ­Michael Kirby has described a new edition of Gerard Henderson’s book, Cardinal Pell, The Media Pile On & Collective Guilt, as “an important contribution to the efforts to establish a Criminal Cases Review Commission” in Australia.

Mr Kirby said basic evidence in the case showed “a very serious doubt was raised as to Cardinal Pell’s guilt”, adding: “Effective protections against miscarriages of justice must be there for all serious cases, even for a cardinal.”

The Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Anthony Fisher, marked the first anniversary of Pell’s death in Rome of a heart attack after hip surgery with the strongest Church statements yet about the Cardinal’s charges, conviction and imprisonment on sexual abuse charges and his later “unanimous High Court exoneration”.

At St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney on Wednesday, Archbishop Fisher said: “Following a media, political and police witch hunt, Cardinal Pell was tried and im­prisoned for crimes he did not commit. Even after he was unanimously exonerated by the High Court he continued to be demonized by some.”

Archbishop Fisher told The Australian: “The Pell case was a serious miscarriage of justice. So far there has been no inquiry into the actions of the police or how the legal system managed to get this so wrong. Perhaps worst of all, there seems to be no mood in Victoria for a serious inquiry into the justice system.”

The Australian also reports that “A separate telephone tap has also revealed a conversation in which one person tells another ‘the highway is open to you’ after Pell was charged. Vatican investigators have been told money was sent to Australia to adversely affect the case against the Cardinal.”

On Wednesday January 10, 2024 in America:

Wrongfully convicted Fr Gordon J. MacRae writes from his prison cell in New Hampshire:

 The case against Cardinal George Pell was …. influenced by nefarious machinations, including police and prosecutor corruption.  This was at the heart of a curious incident related in Prison Journal  (Volume 1, p. 329).  At a pretrial hearing on Cardinal Pell’s false sexual abuse charges, among the most difficult charges to defend against, a Melbourne, Australia priest who was present in the court told Pell’s supporters that he prays that the prosecutor will “mess up his presentation.”  When that actually happened, the priest reportedly said, “See, my prayers are working!”  When Cardinal Pell was told of this he said, “I would have much preferred that he prayed for justice to be done.”

Those were the spontaneous words of an innocent man who believed that justice in this life is possible — even likely.  The guilty on the other hand engage in any number of contrived machinations to do an end run around the law.  When a defendant is innocent and there is no evidence supporting the charge, it is too often police and prosecutors who resort to machinations to do an end run around the law.

There is a vivid example of this on the same page of Pell’s Prison Journal  cited above.  Detective Sgt. Kevin Carson of the Ballarat, Australia Police Department produced a report claiming that sexual abuse by Catholic priests in Victoria — where Pell was facing trial — was responsible for forty-three suicides.  After the shocking story was leaked to tabloid media, a parliamentary inquiry into the Church’s handling of sexual abuse was launched.  An inquiry is similar to a grand jury report in the United States.

The police set up an investigation, but were able to identify only twenty-five of the forty-three named by Detective Carson.  Of those twenty-five names, only sixteen had committed suicide.  But only one of the sixteen had been assaulted by a member of the clergy.  As Pell himself pointed out, “One is one too many, but one is not  forty-three.”  This tendency to “heighten the hype” lends itself to unfair trials and wrongful convictions, but it also lends itself to career advancement, a shamefully strong force in many of the U.S. grand jury reports on Catholic clergy.

In his analysis of the Cardinal Becciu trial in The Wall Street Journal  …, Francis X. Rocca included the following paragraph:

“Around that time, [Pope] Francis made Australian Cardinal George Pell his finance chief and gave him sweeping powers.  Pell unveiled new financial guidelines for the Vatican.  But he clashed with the secretariat, which opposed his plans for a financial audit by an external auditing firm.  Pell considered [Cardinal] Becciu his main opponent ….  Other Vatican officials also lobbied the Pope against Pell’s changes.  The Pope curtailed Pell’s powers and the external audit was cancelled.  Pell later returned to Australia to face child sex abuse charges.  He was acquitted on appeal and died”  [on January 10, 2023].

In an October 15, 2023 published commentary on Mr. Rocca’s account in The Wall Street Journal, [Father MacRae] added some further context to the story:

“The part of this nebulous story that most troubles me is the decision of the Pope to listen to Cardinal Becciu and other Vatican officials who lobbied against Cardinal George Pell’s financial reforms even after [ the Pope] had empowered him to reform Vatican finances.  Mr. Rocca does not speculate on the source of charges against Cardinal Pell in Australia — charges for which he was exonerated in a unanimous decision of Australia’s High Court.  This was after he wrongly spent 400 days in prison.  There are many who believe that there may have been a connection between these false charges and Cardinal Pell’s attempted reforms of Vatican finances.  Pell himself suspected this.”

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— “Week of Pell’s ‘Resurrection’” by Andrew L. Urban

Cardinal Pell, Post-Resurrection

His Eminence Cardinal George Pell, served just over 400 days and nights in an Australian prison before justice finally awakened and sanity finally set in. His guilty verdict was upheld in two attempts at appeal leaving people of just heart and mind around the world scratching their heads. I wrote an early post on this case from the point of view of someone for whom justice had also evaporated into mindless prejudice. My post was “Cardinal George Pell Is on Trial, and So Is Australia.”

On the day I write this, I mark 11,051 days in a U.S. prison for crimes that never took place. I do not know if Cardinal Pell was pressured into accepting a deal, but a deal presented to me was that I could leave prison in one year if I plead guilty. I refused the deal. I do not write this as a comparison of our woes. The number of days does not matter. Anything beyond a single day of wrongful imprisonment for fictitious crimes is, as Catholic League President Bill Donohue described it, a Travesty of Justice.

I rejoiced as justice and freedom were restored to Cardinal Pell, but the insults against him were not over. On January 10, 2023 he died from a heart attack after routine hip-replacement surgery. His body was returned to Australia for interment, and upon arrival it was discovered that some postmortem wounds were mysteriously inflicted upon his body. This magnified our grief, which may actually have been the point. This has never been explained.

But the final words on Cardinal Pell were not the lies of his detractors. It was one of the proudest moments of my life as a priest to learn that while I was writing about Pell from my prison cell in New Hampshire, he was simultaneously writing about me from his prison cell half a world away in Australia. The following excerpts are from his magnificent spiritual biography from the darkest days of his life. These excerpts are from his Prison Journal Volume 2 written in the dark days between his failed appeals and the final awakening of Australia’s High Court. These excerpts, played a small role in restoring his freedom. Today they also play a role in restoring mine:

Source: Prison Journal Volume 2, pp 57-60, Ignatius Press 2021, Entry of Friday, 2 August 2019:

“By a coincidence, today I received from Sheryl [Collmer], a regular correspondent from Texas, a copy of the 15 May 2019 post on the blog Beyond These Stone Walls written by Fr Gordon MacRae. The article was entitled, “Was Cardinal George Pell Convicted on Copycat Testimony?” Fr MacRae was convicted on 23 September 1994 of paedophilia and sentenced to sixty-seven years in a New Hampshire prison for crimes allegedly committed around fifteen to twenty years previously. The allegations had no supporting evidence and no corroboration.

“It is one thing to be jailed for five months. It would be quite another step up, which I would not relish, to spend another three years if my appeal were unsuccessful. But we enter another world with a life sentence. Australia is not New Hampshire, and I don’t believe all the Australian media would blackball the discussion of a case such as MacRae’s.

“The late Cardinal Avery Dulles, SJ, whom I admired personally and as a theologian, encouraged Fr MacRae to continue writing from jail, stating, ‘Someday your story and that of your fellow sufferers will come to light and be instrumental in a reform.’ Fr MacRae recounts the extraordinary similarities between the accusations I faced and the accusations of Billy Doe in Philadelphia, which were published in Australia in 2011 in the magazine, Rolling Stone. Earlier this year, Keith Windschuttle, editor of the quality journal, Quadrant, publicized the seven points of similarity, pointing out that ‘there are far too many similarities in the stories for them to be explained by coincidence.’ [See Keith Windshuttle, ‘The Borrowed Testimony that Convicted George Pell.’ Quadrant, 8 April 2019].

“The author of the 2011 Rolling Stone article was Sabrina Rubin Erdely, no longer a journalist, disgraced and discredited. In 2014 she had written, and provoked a storm which reached Obama’s White House, about ‘Jackie’ at the University of Virginia, who claimed she was gang-raped at a fraternity party in 2012 by seven men. As MacRae points out, ‘The story was accepted as gospel truth once it appeared in print.’ [Note: Rolling Stone later retracted the article in April, 2015]. Jackie’s account turned out to be a massive lie. A civil trial for defamation followed; the seven students were awarded $7.5 million in damages by the jury; and Rolling Stone was found guilty of negligence and defamation.

“The allegations behind the 2011 Rolling Stone article, published in Australia, have also been demolished as false by, among others, Ralph Cipriano’s ‘The Legacy of Billy Doe’ published in the Catalyst of the Catholic League in January-February 2019.

“No one realized in 2015, when the allegations against me were first made to police, that the model for copycat allegations, or the innocent basis for the remarkable similarities, was also a fantasy or a fiction.

“I am grateful to Fr MacRae for taking up my cause, as I am to many others. These include in North America George Weigel and Fr Raymond de Souza and here in Australia Andrew Bolt, Miranda Devine, Gerard Henderson, Fr Frank Brennan, and others behind the scenes.

“I will conclude, not with a prayer, but with Fr MacRae’s opening quotation from Baron de Montesquieu (1742) [from BTSW ‘About’],

‘There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.’”

— George Cardinal Pell, Prison Journal Volume 2, p. 57-60

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EPILOGUE BY FATHER GORDON MACRAE

There is a background story about the origin of the false charges against Cardinal Pell. It came out of the United States when a young con man was allowed to use a pseudonym, Billy Doe, to bring phony charges against several Catholic priests, one of whom died in prison. The story was propelled forward by Sabrina Rubin Erdely and Rolling Stone magazine. It has been exposed as fraudulent, including here at Beyond These Stone Walls in “The Lying, Scheming Altar Boy on the Cover of Newsweek.”

Thank you for reading, pondering, and sharing this important story. I have known many priests who have been falsely accused. In some of those cases the accusations fell apart and the heavy burden of false witness was removed from the nightmarish existence of those priests. Many were so scarred by the current process of American bishops that presumed the guilt of any priest accused and then banished them instantly from any ministry and even from living on any Church property. Once relieved from the burden of false witness most of these priests simply remained in silent exile rather than risk ever becoming targets again.

It was not so for Cardinal Pell. With his life and freedom restored he returned to Rome and spoke in every forum that would welcome him about the ordeal he endured and about what could make such an unjust situation more just. He wrote a letter to me in prison assuring me of his deeply felt concern and fraternal support. He wrote of his resolve to raise my case in Rome at every opportunity.

But he never got the chance. He died unexpectedly during routine hip surgery at a Rome hospital on January 10, 2023. Three days earlier on January 7, 2023 he preached his last homily to the Caritas in Veritates — Magnificat Dominium Community at San Giovanni Rotondo. That homily is our feature this week at Voices from Beyond.

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”