St. Mary's Cathedral in Sydney held a Pontifical Funeral Mass on Thursday for deceased Australian Cardinal George Pell, a former top Vatican official who was acquitted in 2020 of sexual abuse accusations. 

After the service a hearse carried his casket towards the crypt underneath the cathedral. 

He died last month at the age of 81 from heart complications after a hip surgery. A service was held for Pell last month in the Vatican. 

Australian police ultimately dropped its court bid to stop protesters wanting to demonstrate at the scene after the activists agreed to change their initially planned route and convene in a road adjacent to the cathedral, not outside it. 

Nevertheless, some images of verbal altercations between mourners and protesters circulated online.

Brother and Tony Abbott staunchly defend Pell

Former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, a close friend of Pell's, praised him at the ceremony on Thursday, saying his prosecution, conviction, time in prison, and then acquittal had unfairly tainted his reputation. 

Abbott said Pell had been "wronged in life" but kept his faith, saying he had accepted a "modern crucifixion" and could be seen as a "saint for our times." 

"He should never have been investigated in the absence of a complaint. He should never have been charged in the absence of corroborating evidence. And he should never have been convicted in the absence of a plausible case, as the High Court so resoundingly made plain," Abbott said. 

David Pell told the cathedral that his brother was an innocent man who had been "falsely convicted for his predecessor's failings."

Pell said the "regularly reported" line that his brother lacked sympathy for the victims of Church sexual abuse was "simply not true." 

"He believed in the rule of law, a fair go to all, and in Aussie rules parlance, he played the ball and not the man," Pell said of his brother. "He may have disagreed with your opinion but he didn't disagree with you as a person." 

Protesters point to LGBTQ stance, other issues

Protesters had tied colorful ribbons along the fence of the cathedral on Thursday, saying the ribbons symbolized the pain inflicted on child sexual abuse victims. 

One of the confrontations came as people looked to remove some of these ribbons. Others chose to drape rosary beads over them. 

The crowd assembled in a park opposite the cathedral, not right outside as they had first applied to. They staged a march, chanted slogans and carried signs and banners, one of which read "Pell Burn in Hell." 

"[We're here to] just show solidarity with the victims and the survivors of what's happened through the Catholic Church, but particularly George Pell," Layne Elbourne, a musician, told Reuters. 

Pell's critics often allege he showed too little contrition and compassion for abuse victims, or protected other sexual offenders in the church, and point to his conservative views on LGBTQ rights.

But another man in Sydney, economist William Coleman, told AFP he thought Pell was a good man who had been unfairly persecuted and that the timing of the protests was "disgusting." 

Pell returned to the Vatican after he was cleared and released. After his death, it emerged he had been a prominent internal critic of the comparatively liberal Pope Francis, as well as the author of a renowned memo that had been circulating describing the current papacy as a "disaster." 

msh/jsi (AFP, Reuters)