Cardinal Pell scoured out the "pink palace" seminaries in his diocese. He opposed politicians who were pushing LGBT and abortion-rights extremism. He championed religious brothers and nuns known for traditional holiness, not SJW's.
Probably his fatal misstep was launching an independent audit of Vatican departments' finances and the Vatican Bank itself by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Within months PWC´s investigation was permanently suspended by Pope Francis himself --- and the far-left political establishment in Melbourne dug up these "historic charges" on which Pell had already been tried and let go.
In sum, he made a lot of enemies with the Australian Left and with entrenched Italian red-hats (Deepa Ecclesia Swampus Maximus).
News coverage of the trial itself was banned, and the prosecution demanded that a gag-order be instated to prevent Pell and his lawyer from discussing it in public! Does that sound legit??
I am praying his legal appeal will triumph.
We in the US aren’t familiar with the names of priests that were notorious for abuse in Australia. George Risdale, was probably the most notorious and Cardinal Pell had shared a home with him at one time and accompanied Risdale to trial and that is the big reason so many in Australia will never believe Cardinal Pell. This is just the side of the story we don’t hear as much over here. Here’s a link to an article about it. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/06/29/sex-abuse-scandal-has-followed-cardinal-george-pell-for-decades/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.96e8a26bb8f7