Late Cardinal George Pell called Pope a 'catastrophe' in anonymous memo

Controversial Cardinal George Pell wrote an anonymous memo criticising the Pope's leadership as a "catastrophe", says the journalist who released it.

The Australian cardinal, who died on Tuesday aged 81, was one of Pope Francis' top aides until he stepped down to face child sex abuse charges.

The memo was published on a Vatican blog site under a pseudonym last year.

It detailed what the author deemed were failures of the current Pope and a list of priorities for choosing the next.

In the anonymous memo, the author wrote that "Christ is being moved from the centre" of the Church under Pope Francis, and that the Vatican's political prestige had fallen to "a low ebb" under his tenure.

"Commentators of every school, if for different reasons… agree that this pontificate is a disaster in many or most respects; a catastrophe," the memo says. read more