The Vatican yesterday strongly defended Australian Cardinal George Pell against accusations by a member of Pope Francis’s commission on sexual abuse that the Vatican’s finance chief had little regard for victims.

Peter Saunders, one of 17 members of the commission advising the Pope on how to root out sex abuse in the Church, said on Australian TV on Sunday that Cardinal Pell should be dismissed over allegations he failed to take action to protect children.

Cardinal Pell, now in charge of reforming the Vatican’s economic departments, issued a statement soon after the programme, calling Saunders’s comments “false”, “misleading” and “outrageous”, and said he would consult legal advisers.

Cardinal Pell said he had always taken a strong stand against child abuse.

He has denied moving priests accused of abuse between parishes or offering one victim inducements to drop a complaint.

Meanwhile Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said. yesterday, “Cardinal Pell has always responded attentively and in detail to the questions posed by Australian authorities. Cardinal Pell’s comments should be “considered reliable and worthy of respect and attention”.

Cardinal insists he had always taken strong stand against child abuse

Saunders said of Cardinal Pell: “He is making a mockery of the papal commission [into child abuse], of the Pope himself, but most of all of the victims and the survivors.”

“He has a catalogue of denigrating people, of acting with callousness, cold-heartedness, almost sociopathic I would go as far as to say, this lack of care,” said Saunders, a Briton who was himself a victim of abuse. Saunders said Cardinal Pell should be “moved aside” and sent back to Australia to address a separate Australian abuse inquiry, which confirmed yesterday it would ask Pell to testify. Saunders has in the past threatened to resign if the commission did not move quickly to hold accountable those bishops suspected of covering up sexual abuse by priests on their watch.

Australia’s inquiry has focused in recent weeks on the town of Ballarat, in Victoria, where Pell was a priest in the 1970s. Pell said the inquiry’s recent hearings there had raised old allegations of which he had already been cleared.