Let me start by making something clear. I am no unqualified admirer of the late Cardinal George Pell.

On the day in 2020 that Pell was released after the High Court quashed his sexual abuse conviction, and was witheringly critical of the Victorian justice system that brought about a monstrous miscarriage of justice, I wrote:

As a parish priest, diocesan bishop, archbishop and head of the Catholic Church in Australia, Pell’s moral failure to lead, to act swiftly and decisively to ensure paedophile clergy were tried and punished rather than moved and covered up, and its failure to purge those parts of the Church...