In the squalor of this moment there is little to celebrate. Few are jumping for joy that George Pell may spend at least three years and eight months in prison. His fall is too appalling for celebration.

But by jailing a cardinal for these sordid crimes Australia has demonstrated once again that the rule of law runs in this country. Getting here hasn’t been easy but no other country stares down the Catholic church as we do now. This is a day to be proud of that record.

In their rage and confusion, Pell’s supporters have declared their man a martyr to the mob, a victim of press vendettas, a great priest whose reputation has been sullied beyond repair by the left. But that’s not what his fall is about. Somewhere in the past few years, Rome lost the power to protect men like him.

This secular country at the far end of the Earth stood up to Rome to hold the first national inquiry in the world into the role of faiths – particularly the Catholic faith – in a systematic, old and hidden regime of child abuse.

Pell led the opposition to any such inquiry for decades. He was always there saying it wasn’t necessary. And he was backed to the hilt by John Howard, who declared the other day that he still reckoned this convicted paedophile was a man of “exemplary character”.

Astonishing. But never forget that Pell saved Howard’s bacon in 1998. Catholic bishops and welfare agencies had joined in opposition to his proposed GST. The election was in the balance. Then one day Pell declared: “There is no one Catholic position on an issue as complex as taxation.” Those few words were a godsend for Howard. He used Pell’s name all the way to polling day – and he scraped home.

By that time Australia was beginning to send priests to prison. The culture had changed, not within the mob as Pell’s champions would have us believe but within the police. Graduates of police colleges were filling the ranks, men and women who were not party to an old understanding that the faiths should be left to police themselves.

Police in Victoria had been particularly forgiving – if that’s the word – of clergy abusing children. Men who should have been dragged before magistrates were long left to the tender mercy of their bishops. Children paid the price. That changed in the 1980s when the police in Victoria opened a hotline for victims to denounce their abusers. Operation Paradox as it was called netted many paedophile priests including the appalling Gerald Ridsdale, who Pell as auxiliary bishop of Melbourne walked to court.

Twenty years later, the police came for him. Had he been merely a priest there’s no question he would have been charged on the information given by the former choirboy. Should a cardinal be handled any differently? In the end, the brave answer of the police was no.

That was the key decision: professional, secular and unswayed by the might of Rome. In the eyes of the police, Pell was just a citizen, a man accountable to the criminal law like any of us.

Also to be acknowledged on the day of Pell’s sentencing is the bravery of his accuser. The cardinal’s defenders have declared the man a fraud. They haven’t said that in so many words but that’s the only conclusion of their anguished cries that the assault in the sacristy simply could not have happened.

Yet over years of interrogation Pell’s accuser was believed by the police, the Victorian director of public prosecutions and, ultimately, a jury. Not present in the court was a leftist mob. No press campaign urged the jurors on.

A note on the first jury: it did not acquit Pell. He was not in any sense cleared by their failure to reach a verdict. And treat as bullshit claims that Pell was only a couple of votes away from freedom. The very tight circle that knows how the jurors voted does not include Andrew Bolt and Miranda Devine.

That Pell would appeal his conviction was inevitable. That’s how the law operates – not because Pell is a great man but because verdicts in sex cases of this kind are always difficult. There were no witnesses, no corroborating evidence. It’s a classic he said/he said.

All sides should welcome the scrutiny of the jury’s verdict by senior judges of the Victorian court. If the appeal is upheld, the rancour will last a century. Even if it’s not, unending controversy lies ahead unless the courts in Victoria take a simple practical step: make the transcripts of Pell’s trials available to the public.

Put them online.

This should be a rule whenever the reporting of any trial is suppressed. How else can justice be open unless the record of the proceedings is freely available once the suppression orders are lifted?

Transcripts of royal commissions are public documents. We read them at our desks. Why not transcripts of trials held behind closed doors? Why can’t anyone worried about the fairness of Pell’s conviction log on to the court’s website and read, say, the judge’s summing up to the jury?

The Catholic church has lost so much since the child abuse scandal began to unravel nearly 40 years ago. It’s been a long, destructive burn. The billions paid in compensation mean little in the end. The resources of the church are endless.

There will always be legions ready to pay their way to heaven.

The great loss is immunity from the law. This is happening all over the world.

Australia is just a frontrunner. An institution that was once all but untouchable is enduring humiliating days in court. Last week a cardinal in France was given a non-custodial sentence for protecting a paedophile priest. That’s only one prosecution in one jurisdiction.

So many crimes have been committed, so many have been expertly hidden for so long that none of us knows how the world is about to change now the law no longer stops at the doors of the palaces of the church.