The Australian columnists, academic and priest questioning the Pell verdict

As Cardinal George Pell’s conviction for child sexual abuse reverberates around the world, high-profile Australians have questioned the process and outcome.

Columnists, a lawyer and a vice-chancellor have queried the unanimous verdict after Australia’s most senior Catholic was found guilty of orally raping a 13-year-old choirboy and molesting another at Melbourne’s St Patrick's Cathedral in 1996.

News Corp columnist Andrew Bolt said, in his opinion, he believes 77-year-old Pell has been “falsely convicted”.

He said there was “no history or pattern of similar abuse by Pell”, that he was too “intelligent” to “risk his brilliant career”, and that one of the victims had denied the abuse before he died.

“In my opinion, this is our own OJ Simpson case, but in reverse. A man was found guilty not on the facts but on prejudice,” Bolt wrote in a Herald Sun opinion piece.

Another News Corp columnist, Miranda Devine, said the guilty verdict was “devastating” because Pell is “being punished for the sins of his Church, which are foul, but not his doing”.

“Making a martyr of an innocent man won’t right those wrongs. It just compounds the evil,” she wrote in a column.

Australian Catholic University vice-chancellor Greg Craven blamed the media and members of Victoria Police for painting Pell as an “ogre, not a defendant” and thereby undermining the judicial process.

“The result was that when the trial judge imposed a blanket media order against reporting the trials themselves, it was like a ban on reporting that Vladimir Putin is a rather nasty chap. The damage had already been done in a conscious, timely and thorough way,” he wrote in the Australian.

Jesuit priest and human rights lawyer, Father Frank Brennan, said there were “inherent contradictions and improbabilities” in the testimony.

“I was very surprised by the verdict. In fact, I was devastated,” he wrote in the Australian.

“My only conclusion is the jury must have disregarded many of the criticisms so tellingly made by Richter (Pell’s barrister, Robert Richter QC) of the complainant’s evidence and that, despite the complainant being confused about all manner of things, the jury must nevertheless have thought — as the recent royal commission discussed — that children who are sexually violated do not always remember ­details of time, place, dress and posture.

“Although the complainant got all sorts of facts wrong, the jury must have believed Pell did something dreadful to him.”

In December, 12 jurors found Pell guilty of five offences of child sexual abuse in a unanimous verdict.

Suppression orders were only lifted in Australia yesterday.

The convicted paedophile’s lawyers will today launch a last-ditch bid for him to avoid jail when he returns to a Melbourne court.

Pell will face Chief Judge Peter Kidd for a plea hearing, where pre-sentencing submissions will be presented by both crown and defence legal teams.

The historical offences each carry a maximum 10-year prison sentence.