Conservative commentator Andrew Bolt has labelled attacks on the former Archbishop of Sydney, George Cardinal Pell, “shameful” and “disgusting”.
In a Herald Sun column for News Corp Australia today, Bolt criticised “the joy of hatred” that followed news that the cardinal would be permitted to give evidence for the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse from Rome, where he is based, after doctors deemed him too ill to fly.
“Cardinal George Pell is the victim of one of the most vicious witch hunts to disgrace this country,” Bolt wrote.
“It is shameful. Disgusting. Frightening.
“People pretending to be moral have competed with each other to slime Pell as the defender of paedophiles, if not a paedophile himself.
“There is no mercy and no attention to the facts. There is just the joy of hatred.”
Read more: Crucifying Pell