George Pell a victim of Victoria’s ‘corrupt legal system’, says Archbishop Anthony Fisher

Australia’s leading Catholic cleric has declared that the late cardinal George Pell’s wrongful conviction and imprisonment was a result of ‘the corrupt Victorian legal system’.

Cardinal George Pell, right, and Archbishop Anthony Fisher at the Vatican.

Australia’s leading Catholic cleric has declared that the late cardinal George Pell’s wrongful conviction and imprisonment was a result of “the corrupt Victorian legal system” following a media, political and police witch hunt.

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 demonised by some.”

Archbishop Fisher said Pell had been “a soldier for Christ in the culture wars” and a “martyr of the corrupt Victorian legal system”.

On Thursday, 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.”

He also said cardinal Pell’s promotion of morality and religion showed him the “downsides of wokery” and earned him enemies.

The strongest statements yet from the archbishop follow the conviction of Pell’s arch nemesis at the Vatican opposed to his financial reforms, Cardinal Angelo Becciu, for fraud, money-laundering and the perversion of witnesses, and come amid growing calls for further investigation into the circumstances of the charges brought against Pell.

Catholic Archbishop of Sydney Anthony Fisher. Picture: Chris Pavlich

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.”

Cardinal Pell had always maintained his innocence of charges of sexual assault of a chorister in Melbourne’s St Patrick’s Cathedral after mass on a Sunday morning and alleged that corrupt forces within the Vatican had sought to stop his work in reforming the Catholic Church’s finances.

The cardinal was jailed after a jury found him guilty in 2018 of historical sexual abuse, and the Victorian Court of Appeal upheld the conviction in August 2019.

Cardinal George Pell leaves Victorian County Court in February 2019. Picture: David Geraghty

But the convictions were quashed in April 2020 by the High Court in a unanimous ruling, with the judgment stating: “There is a significant possibility … an innocent person has been convicted.”

Pell believed the criminal charges and court proceedings in Victoria during his trials and appeals had been adversely affected by corrupt forces within the Vatican based on a “mystery” $2.3m Becciu sent to Melbourne during 2016 and 2017 during the investigations and trials.

Becciu, who was convicted of fraud in December, has always denied adversely affecting Pell’s criminal proceedings.

Pell made it clear before his death last year that he believed Becciu had not been afforded due process in his fraud trial. However, he also issued a statement months before he died describing Becciu’s evidence to the court as incomplete, and he mocked Becciu’s “spirited defence of his blameless subordinate role in the Vatican’s finances”.

George Pell. Picture: Getty Images

Archbishop Fisher included in his Wednesday service comments from Pope Francis, made since the conviction of Becciu, that Pell “understood better than most what was needed about Vatican financial reforms”.

Pell was appointed by Francis to clean up the Vatican finances in 2014, and until 2017 led the Secretariat of the Economy.

Before Victorian police charges truncated Pell’s appointment in 2017, his phone had been bugged and a car was torched outside the apartment of a close aide.

Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu. Picture: Reuters

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.