Melissa Davey
The Guardian
Tue 17 Sep 2019
Lawyers for Cardinal George Pell have lodged a special leave application with the high court to try to appeal his historical sex abuse convictions, which will be his final avenue to have his conviction overturned.
The high court on Tuesday confirmed it had received the application through its Melbourne registry.
The lodging of the appeal does not mean the high court will agree to hear the case. First, the matter will be considered by a panel of two to three judges, and will either be dismissed or approved. The parties may be called to a brief hearing for further consideration. A decision about whether special leave to appeal will be granted is usually made on the same day as the hearing.
At least five and sometimes all seven justices of the high court will hear the appeal if it is granted. The appeals process can take several months, and is unlikely to be considered before 2020. In the meantime, Pell remains in Melbourne assessment prison, receiving letters and visits from his supporters. Pell has maintained his innocence throughout the process.
The 78-year-old was sentenced to a six-year prison sentence for sexually abusing two 13-year-old former choirboys at St Patrick’s cathedral when he was the archbishop of Melbourne in 1996. He will be eligible for parole after serving a term of three years and eight months.
In August, the Victorian court of appeal – the highest court in the state – dismissed Pell’s appeal. He had 28 days to appeal to the high court, with lawyers filing his application at the 11th hour on Tuesday. However, filing at the last minute is not unusual.
The jury had not been unreasonable in convicting Pell on one count of sexual penetration of a child under the age of 16 and four counts of an indecent act against a child under the age of 16, the Victorian court of appeal chief justice, Anne Ferguson, and appeal court president justice, Chris Maxwell, previously found.
PAT SAYS
George Pell has every legal right to take his appeal to the very end of the legal chain.
For now he has been found guilty and is in prison.
If he is guilty, and a court has said he is, it is very cynical of him to put the victims through a lengthy battle in which they will relive their sufferings.
He seems to be in a “nice” prison where he is visited by many supporters.
That is fortunate for him.
He has had a long privileged life of power, influence, control and no shortage of funds.
Do we even know who is paying his massive and mounting legal fees?
Is Sydney archdiicese paying them out of church funds?
If so, is that ok?
It will be good when this long saga is over.
Even if his appeal is accepted the court may order a retrial.
BISHOP PAT BUCKLEY 
64 replies on “CARDINAL GEORGE PELL TO APPEAL TO HIGH COURY OVER CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE CONVICTION.”
Like ya say He has right of appeal. Who is paying for it. Would an ordinary person be able to access the same services hi
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No, an ordinary person would not have access to the same service.
The priest-leeches look after their own.
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8.00: No true you fool. People can receive free legal aid if no finances are available. Cardinal Pell is right to appeal and is justly entitled to receive financial support from family and friends. More off your spouted hate speech. Go back to bed…..
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2.22
If you believe that the institutional Roman Cathoilic Church isn’t financially assisting pervert, and convicted paedophile, the priest-leech Cardinal George Pell, you’re a far greater fool than you took me for.😲
But then, perhaps that is precisely what you meant with that nice, portentously euphemistic comment: ‘Cardinal Pell…is justly entitled to receive financial support from family and friends.’ Family and friends? Sure. 😕 (Actually, the big, fat, priest-leech is entitled to nothing, but then, that’s the priest in YOU talking, isn’t it? Motivated by your sense of entitlement, of privilege, of exceptionalism, and the rest.)
If the institutional Church is financially assisting Pell (and I believe it is), some of that money may have come from families whose children were sexually violated by cowardly priest-leeches like Pell.
What a kick in the face to those families!
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Hope the travesty of justice will be undone this time.
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BY EMAIL
I’m disturbed at the way you constantly assume Cardinal Pell’s guilt. Several distinguished writers have written articles about this & those articles are there for all to read. Cardinal Pell himself said he doesn’t fear the courts here on Earth. The Last Judgement is what he & everyone of us should fear. At the end of the day you weren’t there when these incidents were alleged to have happened.
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8.56: Pat has a great delight in acting as n5udge, juror and executioner on many clerics. He is a master of speculation, hearsay and innuendo. He builds up fabricated material on such and makes definitive conclusions. In Pat’s twisted moral view you are guilty till proven innocent. He takes a delight in the downfall of others. There’s a vengeance in him that’s demonic.
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What on earth has your stupid comment to do with Paedo Pell’s high-court appeal? Bishop Pat didn’t find him guilty; a jury of his peers did. And then an appeals court upheld Paedo Pell’s conviction.
You should be celebrating the fact that another priest-leech is behind bars and no longer able to prey sexually on wee boys.
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8.45: Get a brain you moron. You priest hate: You demented plonker. Like Pat, you get a perverse thrill out of the downfall of others. Morally perverse. God bless our good priests..
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2.25
Of couse I derive satisfaction from the downfall of grown men who force themselves on terrified little boys! What kind of human being are you? You actually sound morose at Pell’s having been punished for the evil he inflicted on those children, of whom one later died of a heroin overdose that may have been psychologically related to the abuse he suffered at the hands of that bloated, spineless priest-leech. Paedo Pell.
And you call me ‘moron’?
I’d call you something worse…if only Bishop Pat would publish it.
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3.26: Magna, when the truth is spelled out about your moral and spiritual perversion, you become enraged. TRUTH HURTS. You reveal yourself as a pitiable, moronic, infantile and an utterly meaningless individual. You shred to pieces any humanity you may have by your hate speech, faux outrage, constant repetitive vulgarity and evident dysfunctionality. I fail to comprehend any rationale that might explain your abusive rhetoric. It achieves nothing and is demonstrably evil. As for your desire to gloat over other people’s downfall, well, that itself indicates how “lost” morally and spiritually you are. And worse, you seem incapable of having any gospel mercy, compassion, true justice or any semblance of Christ in you, even though you quote THE CHRIST so eloquently at times. That supposed rapport with Christ’s gospel is skin deep, sadly, since not once have you seemed in possession of his mind and heart and your hatred for a particular group of individuals is racist, dangerous and vile. Supreme hater, Magna, take yourself on a retreat or to some other place for healing….
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4.21
So the upshot of that rambling, only-remotely-relevant diatribe of yours is that you’d be happy if the priest-leech, and convicted paedophile Cardinal George Pell had never been brought to justice? You’d much rather he were at liberty…to infringe the liberty of young boys whom he, apparently, serially abuses sexually. And remember: he IS a Prince of the Church. So what the hell about these boys. They don’t matter, do they?
You’re a priest-leech, too, aren’t you?
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5.09: Wrong, Wring, Wring again Magna in understanding of my comment. But I’ll leave it to your tired, sizzled brain to figure out that – of course I wantbjustice – justice primarily for all victims and survivors – and a recognition of every person’s inalienable right to defend their innocence. No more no less. READ PROPERLY and stop REWRITING COMMENTS of others. It’s predictably tiresome.
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Brendan has returned to maynooth and commented such a beautiful place.
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I believe Cardinal Pell has every right to appeal this case against him. He is a citizen of the land and therefore is entitled to pursue his belief in making an appeal. Till then defy I give judgments should be reserved..Pat, you are not “god” deciding the fate of others, however despicable their crimes. Let’s await the outcome of this appeal before burying the man with boulders of metal. It’s a favourite hobby of Pat. Disgusting, skewed moral perspective and very far removed from Christ.
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9.05
Judgement should be reserved on Paedo PELL? Judgement has already been passed on this priest-leech: guilty as charged.
Paedo PELL is where he belongs and where this priest-leech cannot further access terrified little boys.
(Just tellin’ it like it is, like. 😀)
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Yet more repetitive nonsense from the Magna blog.
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Yes, PELL the Paedo keeps retelling the narrative, just like the institutional Roman Catholic Church and its endless saga on ‘Buggering the Boy’. 😀
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Is M Carta retired, unemployed or simply shirking work that they have time to devise caricatures of comments and post them here? It doesn’t require intelligence to employ vulgar terminology haphazardly. I suspect Pat may be paying him to employ such highly-charged language. It stimulates spontaneous reactions here wherein those who so react have taken the bait. Far better to ignore the febrile, puerile and jejune outpourings of a tormented soul.
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Apparently, the appeal will be held in front of seven appeal court judges. He would need four or more them to overturn his conviction.
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No, the appeal has first to be accepted — only a small number of such appeals are heard at all.
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What a brazen man he is, Bp Pat. There would be uproar in Australia if his conviction were overturned.
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Fiat iustitia ruat caelum! Let Justice be done though the heavens fall.
It’s unworthy of an Irishman to worry about public reaction.
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Who said I’m irish or male
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12.20
Let justice be done though the heavens fall: an odd proverb, that one, on several levels.
One thing is certain: if the heavens didn’t fall at the collective, and terrible, injustice by the institutional Roman Church over its criminal mishandling, for centuries, of the sexual abuse of children by freeloading priest-leeches, they certainly wouldn’t bother even to shift hip at the ‘justice’ of a Pellian victory in the High Court.
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So the fact that injustices were committed in the past means we need not worry about the injustice being committed in this case? Fiat iustitia ruat caelum is not an “odd proverb” but a basic maxim of our legal system.
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8:49 Correct. Indeed the tormented soul wouldn’t have known what those four words meant if it were not for Wikipedia and Google Translate.
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No, that’s not what it means, but whatever.
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Pell has been convicted by two courts of pardophilia so it’s entirely natural to call him what he is – a paedophile. +pat wAsnt on the jury so he can bear no blame for the man’s guilty verdict. He is merely repeating what is a truthful fact. I. E Pell is a convicted paedophile as determined by his peers in a court of law. There are those of you on this blog who would make an argument for Hitler not being guilty of genocide. It doesn’t change the facts. Stick to the facts. Pell IS a paedophile and he is still being aided by his so called church. He deserves the condemnation of every right thinking person
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1.35
Indeed.
The Church that continues to support this paedophile financially (and it IS, apparently, doing so) is mocking its claim to be on the side of victims.
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I completely agree. We should put his victims first.
Pell is an old man now. After prison he needs to quietly retire and prepare to meet the Lord.
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At my Catholic school we made a point of asking awkward questions about Hitler being Catholic. Oh – the school colours were black, red and white 😂
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He’s never even been sent to real prison yet!
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I’ve just heard that all the good priests in Australia (and, indeed, around the rest of the world) have taken to the streets to protest the institutional Roman Catholic Church’s continued financial support for Cardinal George Pell, the convicted paedophile. The scenes are heady. I never knew we had so many good, courageous priests. Fr Gerard McGinnity was right after all: these lions truly deserve the name ‘Christmen’.
The telly news reports are full of it. (Mind you, so is the very idea of good , courageous priests. 😕)
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ROFL why do you assume Pell’s guilt?
What are these people on?
He has been found guilty and still guilty on appeal. And they call Magna repetitive?
Actually I am slightly scared that these people are around, with such delusion, unreasoning refusal to see what is in front of their eyes. Next they’ll be making out the Catholic Church is a holy institution and mother!
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29 comments and 19 by Mags the Bitch. Pat, he’s destroying your blog. You may as well put the bitch’s name on it instead of yours. Your facilitating of this lump of hate is proof of your own endorsement of his vile, ugly hate. Since yesterday this Trollope has repeated the same hate speech. And you, Pat, allow him to behave like a Hitler, doing absolutely nothing but support this piece of trailer trash….all supposedly in the name of TRUTH. Neither of you care about TRUTH….but only in promoting your brand of ugly hatred.
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Well said. Repetitive and boring, predictable hate speech from a troll that has set its mouth in the heavens while its tongue dictates to the earth (Psalm 73:9). Enough is enough.
Comments on this blog are way down because people can’t be bothered with this “Carta” thing’s vitriol, day in and day out.
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I agree that 19 out of 29 comments is excessive.
MC says nasty things in nasty ways sometimes but at other times makes very thought provoking comments.
Would readers favour of imposing a certain number of comments per day being put on comments from one person?
If so, what number?
Lets talk about it.
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Pat Buckley at 6:19pm – good idea. Why not limit comments to 10 per day?
Wait till you hear the squeals of this Carta composite now though with its bawls of “persecution”, “censorship” and “martyrdom” 🙄
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Bishop Pat, you don’t seem to realise that the priest-leeches are trying to censor your blog; these guys do not want criticism of any kind.
You don’t seem either to remember what you once said on the subject of comment- numbers: everyone is welcome to multi-comment.
If you fall for this nonsense, you will restrict debate and allow controversial posts to go unchallenged.
I am not preventing anyone from contributing to the blog.
Of course, it’s your call.
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+Pat @ 6:19pm It’s your blog. You decide. If it is either contributing to the days theme or a theme that has developed that you think is furthering your blogs purpose then let the comments run, whosoever authored. If you think it’s a repetitive slanging match or descended into one then you could leave a comment saying this thread is closed for today and not publish anymore of the same until the next issue.
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And Bishop Pat, you took no cognizance of the way I was referred to by the poster who made the suggestion: as ‘Mags the Bitch’, ‘Trollope’, ‘lump of hate’, ‘trailer trash’.
You really can be surprisingly partisan at times, Bishop P. .
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Personally I think this blog is one of the few places you can hear the truth (which is revolting) spoken and that’s why the Cathbots try to censor it. I also think Magna tells the truth. It’s your blog, Bishop Pat, but I would rather you stopped the Cathbots, not Magna, so that the truth can be told.
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Im think about it. Lets see what others think. No decision made.
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6.42: Magna, now you know what it feels like when you name call, disrespect others, are drunkenly vile and vulgar….Yes, Magna, THE TRUTH SPOKEN OF YOU HURTS as much as your poisonous, hate speech rants do…..Get real. Grow up. Bully boy, act your age. Are you in a zombie world?
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6.47: Have you enough tissues to wipe the tears from your eyes, precious Magna? When you measure out your monstrous hatred and poison, expect to receive the same back….I think Magna you live in a parallel world to the rest of us. It’s a great pity you descend into such a farcical person, unprovoked and in such a self degrading manner. I feel sorry for you. You draw on your self the awful commentary and opprobrium given. Most of us would take a break from this blog on receiving such comments on a daily basis but you keep returning only to become the focus of nasty commentary for all the wring reasons, your hate speech. Grow up.
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6.47: Pat, 2 comments a day from Magna is adequate. I am certain you’ll get better quality dialogue if he is silenced. Although he might then become another Brian Darcy!! The one who can’t stop talking and who cries at any given moment when the word “love” is mentioned. But serioysly, 2 per day is enough from Mags.
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7.45 & 7.50
Oh, I wasn’t complaing about the name-calling; it really doesn’t bother me (unlike the priest-leeches, who want to sanitise the truth about them.) I was just calling Bishop P’s attention to the poster at 5.13, who was whining about what he or she called ‘hate speech’ while indulging their own. It’s commonly called ‘hypocrisy’.😕 But given your preference for 1984 style verbal sanitisation, you both would obviously call it something much nicer. (Less true😕, but much, much nicer.😊)
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8.18: Mags, the whinger, stop your raving madness. You keep running to Pat like a spoiled brat,”Bishop Pat”….Like a baby, “mammy, mammy” I’ve been hit by that nasty boy iver there…You are utterly ridiculous..you screaming piece of vermin. ..
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6.13: You made the same comment yesterday. Have you any iruginity in your brain? The TRUTH is vital for JUSTICE, but you are as trenchant in wanting censorship of those who have a different viewpoint as you are of Catholics who comment. You just happen to be on the opposite end of the spectrum, you gombeen. Let he who has a brain……..
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Let him, actually. Objective Case object of the verb ‘let.’
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I totally agree with the suggestion of restricting multiple comments, and my preference would be for a maximum of five. Repetitive immediate “shooting from the hip” excessive comments of a similar nature tend to show little thoughtful reflection on others viewpoints, and often betray a rigidity of thought impervious to any meaningful dialogue or significant effort to appreciate others perspectives. I prefer the blog to promote debate and dialogue rather than a tool for lambasting others opinions.
Yesterday I posted a comment to Magna urging him to reflect on his approach. I hope he has read it, and suggest that some others who repetitiously comment likewise might consider it too.
MMM
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8.14: MMM, others like you have cautioned Pat to be more discretionary about Magna and his enemies. But your advice for Magna to reflect seriously – you may as sell talk to the stones in the field….Magna has contemotvfor all, even for reasonable people like you. Wish your rational approach, tolerance and respect for others wiuld find their way into Carta’s perspectives.
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Five is reasonable. Most of Magna’s comments are just hate speech sloganeering.
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Bishop Pat, one more thought on this latest hot potato. These people have tried all sorts of things to get rid of your blog; they even forced you to move to another site.
They won’t give up. If you think that this latest round of whinging is the last, think again: they’ll come back for more, and they’ll keep coming back. They wont be satisfied with controlling what words are used, but with what thoughts about them may or may not be expressed.
You have a lot of thinking to do.
Choose wisely; you know you have many enemies among the priest-leeches.
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8.24: No Magna, Pat has some very good allies and friends who are priests and who contribute sensibly, apart from a few malcontents. Pat gives a forum for pruests which is worthwhile. Thecreal priblem is not the “enemies” as you refer to, butvrather it is YOU, bully boy Magna because ypur constant hijacking of this blog, mostly in a drunken state, are the enemy. You are the catalyst that brings out the viciousness in people. You, Mags, are THE ENEMY.
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And I would just add to what Magna says, that they take advantage of your good nature. You are extraordinarily generous in the space you give your critics here, and you’re not obliged to. You could simply refuse any comments criticising your person or views.
Magna is right – they will use your good nature to turn your blog into a farce.
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I feel, that to be authentic, I need to allow absolute enemies to have a good go at me on here.
That’s because I know that I am very human and very fallible.
Is it a fault to let your enemies have a go?
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Is it a fault, then, to let Magna have a go at his enemies (and they at him) as often as he feels the need?
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Not a fault at all, because it reflects your own values.
Personally I would come at that from the perspective that because we are fallible we have to be open to others reflections. But are you sure this blog is the place for that openness? You would still get opposing views posted as comments but I feel there’s a danger that the view you give above doesn’t come across.
I also appreciate that while friends may not be the best mirrors because of being biased towards you is it such a good idea to take much account of actual enemies? They simply want to discredit you.
Your kindness to these people is really impressive!
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Magnas daily timetable. Drink, hand job, keyboard warrior, drink, one over the wrist, keyboard warrior, wee doze. More drink, another J Arthur, keyboard again, 40 winks……..etc etc etc …….
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8.59: Excellent but you forgot to mention his pet – Viper the Snake who gives him a good twist around the goolies every night….helps Mags to unwind!!!!and release!!!!
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BO Pat. To put a limit on the number of posts would be wrong. If someone has something to say on the topic of the day they should be free to post and free to respond to any criticism. I fear Magna is getting too close to the truth for some people on this blog. Limiting the number of an individuals posts is a form of censorship, never a good thing in a free society
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Haven’t posted for ages and ages.the person who attacks Magna ad nausium just as quick as Magna posts is the poster I wd like to see chopped
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