George Pell saw climate science as a dangerous religious dogma – in the end his hardline stance held the church back

Cardinal George Pell’s climate scepticism became the outlier when Pope Francis released his encyclical on the environment, but it didn’t stop his criticism. Photograph: Giuseppe Lami/EPA

The late Cardinal George Pell left a legacy of climate science denial which – in his later years – became ever more distanced from reality and the position of the Catholic church.

For decades in newspaper columns and speeches, Pell popularised climate denial talking points to dismiss the science of global heating and to brand environmentalists as hysterical and in the grip of a pseudo-religion.