Where’s the police apology to Pell, who died last year, his career and reputation destroyed?

Why did Victoria Police apologise to a Papuan sex offender for a couple of hours of embarrassment but not to an innocent Christian bishop wrongly jailed for 13 months?

Christians last week learnt how lowly they now rank after Victoria’s police issued a grovelling apology to a serial sex offender from West Papua.

They even learnt Labor is paying defenders of terrorism to promote Islam.

First, let me be clear: I have no problem with police saying they were “sincerely sorry” for arresting Alfons Pirimapun for something he did not do. This time.

But why haven’t they also said sorry for wrongly charging Catholic cardinal George Pell?

Cardinal George Pell was wrongly charged. Picture: Getty

Pirimapun is an illegal immigrant jailed in Queensland for indecently assaulting women, and later convicted of raping a woman in Victoria.

He’s now one of 149 foreign criminals the Albanese government freed from immigration detention last year when the High Court ruled that illegal immigrants who wouldn’t or couldn’t go home could not be detained indefinitely.

Yet police have now apologised to him because they’d arrested, charged and held Pirimapun for a few hours last week when they wrongly thought he was the man – same appearance, same area – who’d allegedly sexually assaulted a Richmond woman.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese attacked the Liberals for “pre-emptive political gameplay” over Pirimapun, initially exploiting news of his arrest: “Authorities should be allowed to do their job free of this.”

Now contrast. Unlike Pirimapun, Cardinal George Pell had no criminal record when Victoria Police charged him in 2017 with 26 child sex offences against nine boys.

What a farce. Those charges were so preposterous that every one was eventually dropped, dismissed or overturned on appeal.

Police even claimed Pell raped one boy during a screening in a busy cinema, apparently not caring that anyone could see him or hear the boy scream.

Even the charges that saw Pell jailed for 404 days – until the High Court unanimously overturned his conviction – were so ridiculously improbable that no impartial police force should have trusted them.

Police actually claimed Pell raped two teenage boys at once in an open sacristy right after Mass, even though one of them denied any abuse, witnesses swore they were with Pell at the time, and neither Pell nor his alleged victims could have reached the scene of the crime at the only time the sacristy could have been empty.

So where’s the police apology to Pell, who died last year, his career and reputation destroyed? Why do police apologise to a Papuan sex offender for a couple of hours of embarrassment, but not to an innocent Christian bishop wrongly jailed for 13 months?

That’s not the only hypocrisy. Albanese, outraged that the Liberals made Pirimapun a political issue for half a day, was silent when Labor persecuted Pell for years.

Labor premier Daniel Andrews had even shamed former Liberal prime minister Tony Abbott for visiting his friend Pell in prison, and when the High Court ruled Pell was wrongly convicted, tweeted: “I have a message for every single victim and survivor of child sex abuse: I see you. I hear you. I believe you.”

Andrews also promoted Shane Patton, who oversaw the Pell investigation, to chief of his police.

If you haven’t yet got the message, note another scandal last week.

Adel Salman, head of the Islamic Council of Victoria, told the ABC the October 7 attack on Israel by the Hamas terrorist group was a “legitimate act of resistance”, even though Hamas slaughtered 1200 people, raped many women, shot children, beheaded victims and kidnapped more than 250 people.

Islamic Council of Victoria President Adel Salman described the October 7 attack as a ‘legitimate act of resistance’. Picture: Islamic Council of Victoria

Salman had not simply misspoken, even if he now says he’s against the killing of innocents. Last October he’d also said the Hamas slaughter eight days earlier was a “legitimate response to occupation and siege” and “shame” on journalists asking him to condemn Hamas.

Yet Victoria’s Labor government still invited him to its dinner this month to celebrate the Muslim Ramadan.

What’s more, it promised at the last election to “invest $500,000 to fund an exhibition to celebrate the life of the Prophet Muhammad (Peace be Upon Him) and share the history of our Islamic communities”.

Some of that money was to go to Salman’s Islamic Council of Victoria, which would get another $400,000 for “Open Mosque Day” so “more Victorians can share in and learn about the faith”.

Does Labor pay Catholics to “celebrate the life of Christ” or lure Victorians into their churches? Does it throw dinners for bishops who’ve defended the mass murder of civilians?

Why does this Labor government shill for Islam, not Christianity? Why do its police apologise to a Papuan sex offender and not a martyred cardinal?