A CONTROVERSIAL Australian cardinal, whose conviction for child abuse was overturned this year, has claimed his conservative Catholic views drove public opinion against him.
George Pell (79) told the BBC that he would not apologise for his views.
"I think my style is rather direct - the fact that I defend Christian teachings - is irritating to a lot of people," he told BBC Radio 4.
"For my basic Christian positions I make no apology at all."
Cardinal Pell said he was "very much aware of their suffering" when asked about victims of clerical child abuse. He said that while he regretted what had happened within the Church, he was "able to sleep quite well on most occasions".
A former senior adviser to the Pope, he became the most senior figure in the Catholic Church to be charged with sex abuse.
In December 2018, a jury found him guilty of sexually abusing the two 13-year-old choir boys in the mid-1990s when he was Archbishop of Melbourne.
The trial heard testimony from a man alleged to be the sole surviving victim. Dozens of other witnesses provided alibis and other evidence.
Cardinal Pell failed in a bid to overturn the conviction in Victoria's Court of Appeal last year, but was successful at High Court of Australia in April, bringing an immediate end to a six-year jail sentence.
The court ruled other testimonies had introduced "a reasonable possibility that the offending had not taken place".
