Pell went through the whole legal system and was convicted. The time he spent in jail was the time that elapsed while waiting for the High court to hear and then quash his conviction.
Saunder's process is only beginning. Seems his financial chicanery mismanagement has caught up with him and he can't afford to post his bail, and, unlike Pell, no one believes he's innocent enough to help with those costs.
The odd thing is that the accusations against Cardinal Pell were implausible, as the Australian Supreme Court eventually found. But the prosecutors pursued the case and somehow got the second jury involved to convict and the initial judges to check off on it. (One does have to ask about how the jury and judges were selected and instructed, and whether there were some people in the Vatican eager to get rid of Cardinal Pell and his reform efforts pushing for the conviction, or even paying for it.) By contrast, in this case, the Australian authorities did not aggressively pursue the accusations against Bishop Saunders when they were first made in 2019 and instead only recently managed to discover the incriminating evidence. One suspects that the Australian government favored Bishop Saunders but found the more faithful Cardinal Pell to be a nuisance.
It's also very likely it's just different people making the decisions - with different degrees of (in)competence, different jurisdictions and different biases
Is there a good explanation why Pell gets a year of jail time for being innocent, while Saunders is a free man after all of this?
Pell went through the whole legal system and was convicted. The time he spent in jail was the time that elapsed while waiting for the High court to hear and then quash his conviction.
Saunder's process is only beginning. Seems his financial chicanery mismanagement has caught up with him and he can't afford to post his bail, and, unlike Pell, no one believes he's innocent enough to help with those costs.
The odd thing is that the accusations against Cardinal Pell were implausible, as the Australian Supreme Court eventually found. But the prosecutors pursued the case and somehow got the second jury involved to convict and the initial judges to check off on it. (One does have to ask about how the jury and judges were selected and instructed, and whether there were some people in the Vatican eager to get rid of Cardinal Pell and his reform efforts pushing for the conviction, or even paying for it.) By contrast, in this case, the Australian authorities did not aggressively pursue the accusations against Bishop Saunders when they were first made in 2019 and instead only recently managed to discover the incriminating evidence. One suspects that the Australian government favored Bishop Saunders but found the more faithful Cardinal Pell to be a nuisance.
It's also very likely it's just different people making the decisions - with different degrees of (in)competence, different jurisdictions and different biases
Saunders is currently out on bail. He has said he will plead not guilty, and he will reappear in court in June, according to this reporting from Australian Associated Press: https://amp.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/feb/23/christopher-saunders-former-catholic-bishop-of-broome-indicates-he-will-plead-not-guilty-to-child-sexual-abuse-allegations
His victims were black and Pell's alleged victims were white?