Peter Westmore, former president of the National Civic Council, which is an Australian conservative Christian lobby group, joins us now.

Peter, you attended both trials, and you say every evidence presented shows that Cardinal Pell couldn't have done this.

Then why do you think that the jury convicted him?

I think you have to look at the state of public opinion in Australia.

We've just been through a royal commission into sexual abuse off Children in religious institutions, which focused on the Catholic Church.

And for four years there has been endless reports off both abuse and of cover ups by members of the hierarchy and some religious orders, which extended roughly from the 19 seventies through to the 19 nineties, when Archbishop Ellis, he then Waas, became the archbishop of Melbourne and put in place procedures to try to deal with this problem.

So are you saying that the jury pool was tainted and they weren't Catholic?

Now I'm not saying that a door, the jury pool with people chosen at random from the Australian public and the fact that the jury came to this conclusion country to the evidence, uh, in my view indicates that it's a commentary on public opinion in Australia, and the reputation of the Catholic Church and Cardinal pill just happens to be the cool guy.

Were you, um, Do you know if people were Catholic who were on that jury?

No.

In Australia, nobody knows the identity off jurors.

Their identity is is not published, and it is illegal for members of the public or the journalists to go to interview jurors either before, during or after trials.

So we don't know.

I don't know that the judge did not in any sense exclude Catholics from serving on the jury when he was impaneling the jury at the start of the job you've known Cardinal Pal for 20 years.

Can you really be objective about this case?

So let's put this wife.

If I had not attended the trial and I had simply heard on the news or read in the newspapers that Cardinal Pell had been convicted of child sexual soul, I would have reluctantly included that he must have been guilty now with us.

I happened to sit in the court through the course of two trials, each of which went for five weeks in which there are over 25 witnesses.

And I can say categorically that in both those trials, there was no evidence given by any of those witnesses or called by the prosecution.

By the way, there was no evidence which corroborated or supported the claim off the complainant's allegations.

Okay, We're gonna have to leave it there.

Peter West, More former President, National Civic Council.

Thank you for joining us.

Thank you.