Cardinal George Pell’s critics cannot run from the High Court’s decision

Cardinal George Pell is driven out of Barwon Prison. Picture: David Geraghty/The Australian.

The fallout from the 7-0 High Court decision will be profound.

In the first instance it gives George Pell his freedom, which the court clearly believed he deserves.

The result is not about what people think of the 78-year-old cardinal or what they might think he did, but it is all about whether the Victorian justice system worked when he sent him to jail.

It clearly didn’t. It was dysfunctional in this case.

Cardinal Pell, as much as many won’t like to read it, is the victim of a grave injustice that cost him 405 days of his freedom.

Victorian taxpayers can expect to pick up a frightful bill for costs.

The incarceration, nonetheless, has all but destroyed his career, it has exposed him and his family to ridicule and caused false hope for tens of thousands of survivors so opposed to the Catholic Church.

No-one will be thinking that the controversy surrounding the cardinal will end, because in many ways it can’t.

But the Pell critics cannot run from the High Court’s decision.

It is straight and clean as a high-powered bullet.

The cardinal was wronged.