Mourners at the Sydney funeral for Australian Cardinal George Pell, who was once the most senior Catholic convicted of sex abuse, remembered him Thursday as a victim of a campaign to punish him regardless of his guilt.

Meanwhile, a few hundred protesters yelled slogans from the street denouncing Pell, a staunch conservative who had riled gay rights supporters and was among church leaders blamed for inaction on clergy sex abuse.

Sydney Archbishop Anthony Fisher told the mourners at St. Mary’s Cathedral that the once third-highest-ranking cleric in the Vatican was the author of a dozen books including three volumes of a diary he wrote in prison before his child abuse convictions were overturned in 2000.

“That was one happy fruit from 404 days spent in prison for crimes he did not commit following a media, police and political campaign to punish him whether guilty or not,” said Fisher, a longtime…