Cardinal George Pell has told an Italian current affairs program that there is “some evidence but no proof” that figures within the Vatican conspired to “destroy” him, the strongest comments he has made to date that allege the charges against him may be linked to Vatican corruption. Pell claimed all senior figures within the Vatican who had taken charge of reforming the finances of the Holy See “with very few exceptions, has been attacked by the media on the level of reputation in one way or another”. Pell was the Vatican’s finance minister until he returned to Australia to face sexual abuse allegations. Asked if he suspected there was a link between his financial reforms and “what happened”, Pell said: “Of course I suspected it. “In Australia, everyone I work with has no doubt that the link is obvious,” he told the Sette Storie program in an interview aired on the free-to-air broadcaster, Rai News. “We have no evidence yet, but certainly a lot of smoke,” Pell said. “We have criminals who have been heard to say: ‘Pell is out of the game. Now we have a highway in front of us.’ Of course all this is still smoke, you can not yet consider evidence, but it remains a possibility. “It’s for this reason that I hope that there will never be enough evidence to prove that Vatican money was used if not to corrupt directly, at least to poison the public atmosphere against me. I hope there is no proof of this for the good of the church.” Pell said one senior figure he worked with on Vatican financial reform “committed suicide under the London Bridge with his hands behind his back, a strange way of hanging himself”. Another found his car on fire in front of his home. “My family often told me that it would have been different if the mafia had hunted me, if others, maybe the Masons, had hunted me,” Pell said. “It is much worse if someone inside the church is trying to destroy you.” In March, Australia’s high court upheld Pell’s appeal against conviction and acquitted him of five sexual offences. Pell was released from jail, where he had spent more than one year. Asked about his conviction and acquittal, Pell said: “Legal processes are not infallible. “Only the pope is infallible, and [only] on a limited number of occasions. Public opinion was very poisoned and hostile towards the church over the issue of paedophilia crimes and the inadequate way in which they had been dealt with on some occasions.” He said while he could not complain about the legal process or the jurors, who “were civil society people”, he was critical of news organisations and journalists alleged to have broken a suppression order preventing publication of details of the case. Contempt of court proceedings are currently moving through Melbourne’s supreme court. “At the moment there are open proceedings against a number of the newspapers for violating the embargo of the court,” Pell said. But Pell criticised the supreme court of appeal too, who upheld the conviction of the jury in the first appeal attempt by Pell’s lawyers. The court decided by a majority of two to one to uphold the jury’s conviction, which meant Pell’s legal team then had to appeal to the high court. “The gigantic mistake was made by the two judges of the majority of the court of appeal,” Pell said. “It was publicly denounced and it was a bad blow to the reputation of these two judges. And that for me was the hardest part against me. I could understand that public opinion was against me while I could not understand why two expert judges could reach those conclusions.” Pell is soon to publish a memoir of his time in jail, called “404 days”. Pell told Sette Storie he developed a daily routine while in jail. “I tried to keep living,” he said. “The situation was horrible, I knew that I could appeal against the decision, that it did not end there. I also knew that if things had gone really bad in this life I could successfully argue my case before the good lord in the next life. But of course it was a big blow.” In October, three Italian newspapers reported allegations that Cardinal Giovanni Becciu, who resigned from the Vatican in September, made a $1.1m payment to undisclosed recipients in Australia to secure a conviction against Pell. The newspapers have not revealed any subsequent evidence of a wire transfer to Australia. The father of one of Pell’s alleged victims said at the time the allegations were “offensive”. “This is absolute stupidity and these allegations should never have seen the light of day,” he said at the time. “I have certainly not received any money to give evidence against George Pell and any suggestion that the surviving complainant has is just ludicrous. “Anyone who knows this man [the complainant who brought the case against Pell] and his character knows there is absolutely no chance he would have been involved in such underhanded tactics.” Becciu denied he made such a payment or any other wrongdoing. “I categorically deny interfering in any way in the trial of Cardinal Pell,” he said in a statement.