"Australia's Cardinal George Pell, who died Tuesday at 81, was the most influential Catholic churchman in the English-speaking world. Pell devoted his considerable talents and prodigious energies to proclaiming the Gospel, refusing to be cowed by a culture turning against its Christian heritage. Persecuted in his native Australia, he suffered a wrongful sexual-abuse conviction but emerged with his reputation intact and his credibility enhanced.
Pell was born in 1941 in Ballarat, about 60 miles west of Melbourne. An outsize presence from his early days, he was a towering physical force who excelled at Australian rules football and in the classroom. He started his seminary studies at home before completing them in Rome and earning a doctorate at Oxford. As he returned to Australia, he was marked by the Vatican for leadership, the only man ever to serve as archbishop of both Melbourne (1996-2001) and Sydney (2001-14).
Pope John Paul II created him a cardinal in 2003. Under Pope Benedict XVI, Pell led efforts to produce a new English translation of the Mass, rendering a text both more beautiful and more faithful to the original Latin. In 2014 Pope Francis appointed him to lead his financial-reform efforts, effectively making Pell the third-highest ranking cardinal in Rome. Few men received appointments from all three popes.
Pell kept in his office in Sydney a picture of Cardinal John O'Connor, archbishop of New York (1984-2000), as his model for how to proclaim Christ robustly in a sometimes hostile public square. He invited O'Connor to Melbourne to dedicate a new altar in his cathedral, also called St. Patrick's: a declaration that Pell intended to follow O'Connor's uncompromising combination of Catholic orthodoxy, moral truth, pro-life witness and solidarity with the poor. He took "Be not afraid," Pope John Paul II's signature biblical phrase, as his own motto.
Pell's forthrightness caused discomfort for the flaccid Catholic establishment in Australia. When O'Connor died in 2000, Pell assumed his indomitable mantle for the English-speaking Catholic world. He was a leading advocate of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger's election as pope in 2005, and had emerged as one of Benedict's staunchest lieutenants by 2008, when the pope visited Sydney for World Youth Day.
Yet it was under Pope Francis that Pell became a Vatican official, brought to Rome to clean up the church's opaque and occasionally corrupt finances. He bulldozed throughout Vatican bureaucracy, bringing in updated practices for accountability and transparency.
Pell prevailed over entrenched interests in Rome until he opposed attempts by Pope Francis to relax ancient doctrine on marriage and divorce. "As Christians, we follow Christ," Pell said during the 2014 synod on the family. "Some may wish Jesus might have been a little softer on divorce, but he wasn't. And I'm sticking with him." The pontiff wasn't pleased and gutted the authority of the secretariat for the economy, the new financial-reform body he had created and entrusted to Pell.
Pope Francis eventually changed course and vindicated Pell's reforms thoroughly. But by then Pell was no longer in Rome. He had returned to Australia in July 2017 to face a series of charges that he had sexually abused minors. The Victoria state police -- so notoriously corrupt that a royal commission was called to investigate its abuse of due process -- launched what it would concede in court was a "Get Pell" operation. It decided on a defendant, then set out to find a crime.
Wholly implausible charges were brought, and in a fevered atmosphere -- a frenzy stirred up in no small part by the Australian Broadcasting Corp. -- he was convicted. He served more than a year in solitary confinement, denied the opportunity to celebrate Mass. He would be speedily vindicated by the High Court of Australia, which, unlike the U.S. Supreme Court, can review the facts of a case.
In a scathing assessment of the "Get Pell" spirit animating the prosecution and lower courts, the high court unanimously and emphatically overturned the convictions. It didn't order a new trial but entered on its own authority the only verdict fitting for an innocent man -- total acquittal.
Pell emerged from prison demonstrating that the Catholic orthodoxy he always preached includes mercy, forgiveness and compassion. He spoke no ill words about his persecutors and published three volumes of his prison diaries, which revealed the inner Christian disciple that public caricatures concealed. Pell told friends that he was deeply touched that those diaries were being read to Pope Benedict XVI in the last weeks of his life.
Pell was magnanimous and merciful. His ecclesial service was without parallel in Australia. And his witness during wrongful imprisonment was the crown of a public, deeply faithful and remarkably inspiring Catholic life.
---
Father de Souza is a priest in Kemptville, Ontario, and a columnist with the National Post and National Catholic Register." [1]
Socrates did not emigrate and faced the court to show a good example of citizenship. Cardinal Pell returned from Rome to face the court.
1. Cardinal Pell Faced Down a Hostile World
De Souza, Raymond J. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 13 Jan 2023: A.13.
Komentarų nėra:
Rašyti komentarą