Remembering Cardinal George Pell: Personal Reflections Part 2

National Catholic Register, 23 January 2023

Collaborating with the cardinal at World Youth Day in Sydney was a high point of our relationship, but equally significant was his inspiring witness of courage — and encouragement to others — in the face of grave setbacks.

In my personal memories of the late Cardinal George Pell, the events surrounding World Youth Day — both in Toronto and Sydney — were a high point, both in terms of time spent together and intensity of collaboration.

In July 2007, he invited me to spend several weeks at Cathedral House in Sydney to work on preparations for WYD the following year. I then returned for several weeks during WYD itself in 2008 — though having to vacate Cathedral House when the papal party itself arrived!

We often began with Mass together in the house chapel, and in addition to meals together and specific projects, he would invite me to accompany him here and there so that I could learn about this or that. He arranged for me to meet important figures advancing the proposal, as he would call it, that “the Christian package works!" It was a most generous inclusion of a young priest in his life, a lens through which to see the challenges of preaching the gospel today. And it was immense fun. Cardinal Pell thought preaching the gospel should be.

World Youth Day Toronto

Cardinal Pell was an enthusiastic advocate for WYD, leading long-distance Australian pilgrimages to several of them. Immediately after WYD 2002 in Toronto, he insisted that I join the Australian delegation for a few days of retreat and relaxation at a summer camp north of the city. He invited the pilgrims to share their experiences, encouraged them to return to Australia with renewed vigor — and joined in their sports and games.

I recall two moments in particular. He teased his successor in Melbourne, Archbishop Denis Hart, about “preaching heresy” for a homily in which he mistakenly said that Jesus was the “perfect human person” rather than that Jesus is a divine person with a perfect human nature. Cardinal Pell did not only correct his juniors, but his brother bishops, too.

Archbishop Hart took the good-natured correction in the spirit it was intended, but there was some discomfort. He knew that he was Cardinal Pell’s significant inferior in both intelligence and learning — and that everyone else knew it, too. Some of Cardinal Pell’s brethren in the episcopate chafed when the comparison was made manifest.

The other memorable moment was when Cardinal Pell announced to us over Canadian beer that, having seen the magnificent live Stations of the Cross on University Avenue in Toronto, he was determined to do it even better in Sydney. He had only been archbishop there for a year, but he was resolved to bring WYD to Sydney as the catalyst for his vision of an Australian Catholicism that was orthodox, confident, spirited and attractive.

World Youth Day Sydney

My task in Sydney 2008 was to assist Cardinal Pell with the many addresses that he was to deliver in those days, several of them welcoming Pope Benedict XVI in different settings. It was a high honor to assist him in that, and he paid me the compliment of being rather direct when he was not satisfied with what I had drafted.

“You are writing as if I am Renata Tebaldi, Raymond, when I am more Maria Callas,” he explained one day. “Both are admirable, but one is not the other.”

I had no idea of who he was talking about, which proved occasion for a bit of instruction in culture. Tebaldi and Callas were great operatic sopranos of the 1950s and 1960s. Tebaldi was more elevated, Callas was more earthy, the former tending toward a refined elegance, the latter toward exultant force. Pell, the former Aussie Rules footballer, made it clear in which camp he fell. 

“Okay,” I said. “But I can’t sing either way.” 

That a brought a smile and instructions to re-draft without the fancy sentences.

Despite public caricature as a crotchety old curmudgeon, Cardinal Pell was kindly and not without sentiment. His welcoming address to Benedict at the closing Mass of WYD would be on July 20, the anniversary of my priestly ordination. He thus permitted me to include in his text a line I had preached in my first homily as a cleric: One mission is better than a thousand options.

To share, in a small way, in the great triumph of WYD Sydney, one of the highpoints of Pell’s 56 years of priesthood, remains for me a treasured memory.

Setbacks

There were not only highlights. I was with Cardinal Pell in July 2007 when news arrived that the American bishops has failed to approve a set of texts for the new translation of the Roman Missal. Cardinal Pell was chairman of the Vox Clara committee, an international advisory group of bishops working on a single new translation of the Mass in English. By 2007 he had worked for six years on the project, investing enormous time and energy. The failed American vote would mean that the “whole project would fall over” — an enormous failure and immense disappointment. 

He greeted the news with equanimity, resignation and determination. There was a simple acknowledgment that bold initiatives sometimes did not succeed. Many worthwhile ventures would be opposed. He trusted that his American brethren would attempt to salvage the project, which they did. The new translation came into force in 2011, one of his greatest achievements. The supposed autocrat brought to completion one of the most collegial projects of the last generation. 

I was in his Vatican office in April 2016 when the shocking news arrived that then-Archbishop Angelo Becciu had unilaterally canceled the first-ever Vatican-wide audit that Cardinal Pell had ordered as prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy. It was a devastating blow to the reform process, a reversal of the cardinal’s key initiative — and completely outside Archbishop Becciu’s authority to do so. Yet he persuaded Pope Francis to side with him against Cardinal Pell, who tasted bitter disappointment.

There were no histrionics. No outbursts. He continued his efforts, not viewing any setback as permanent. Eventually, Pope Francis would reconsider again, vindicating Cardinal Pell.

When I would teach young men Rudyard Kipling’s poem, If, about what it means to be a man, I would often think that Pell filled out much of Kipling’s vision: If … [you can] watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools.

Then there was the wrongful conviction. Speaking to him by phone on Epiphany 2019, between his conviction and sentencing to prison, he permitted himself only the most extreme understatement: “I concede it is a blow.” And when he actually went to prison he simply said that he was “overdue to make a retreat,” which he did for 404 days behind bars.

In time he was vindicated on that matter too.

Death of Benedict

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