For George Pell, the church was nothing if not a bastion of conservatism

Cardinal George Pell divided Australians. To his admirers, Tony Abbott among them, he was a much-wronged living saint. To his detractors he was practically the devil incarnate, a man whose inaction and dissimulation had allowed prolific sexual predators to flourish within the Australian Catholic Church. His evasions of responsibility meant that catharsis just could not be reached.

The dead cardinal should have been the quintessential Aussie success story: the country boy done good, a talented athlete who later proved himself a worthy scholar and leader of men. Yet Pell, whose childhood in Ballarat was no easy affair, never really left the footy field even when he went to play God’s greater game. 

Such was his prowess that he was signed for Richmond in 1959. And he displayed the same talent for getting his way and heaving past opponents within the church, too. Superiors admired his “can-do” attitude. Those who resisted his ideas and his methods were often left in his wake.

But Pell was by no means a selfish player. He played for the team. He just defined victory differently from many of his teammates.

At heart the difference was this: for Pell the church was nothing if it was not a bastion of conservatism. Even in his final years, he was reiterating his combative philosophy: there was no benefit to seeking compromise with critics. His role — the leader’s role — was to give succour to the faithful, and to increase their number. To do that he needed to stand up for what the church believed in.

The problem was this alienated the many liberal Catholics for whom the core of Pell’s beliefs was not a point of consensus but anathema. He didn’t care. He had the courage of his convictions and he knew that God was on his side. 

Pell’s steadfast and indefatigable faith are essential to understanding how he was able to endure the cruel and brutal miscarriage of justice which befell him in Victoria in his final years. To this outsider, a newcomer to Australia at the time of the trial, the charges against Pell always sounded implausible. Nevertheless, convicted Pell was — and many rejoiced.

It seemed as if Australians needed someone to be the focus of their anger at the church’s many failures over decades — and who else could that be but the cardinal who oversaw them? Senior churchmen such as he have always been vulnerable to false charges and rough justice but it was genuinely shocking and dispiriting to see injustice done to such a high-profile public figure in a place like Victoria. The High Court judgment upholding Pell’s appeal raised grave doubts about the efficacy, competence and impartiality of our criminal justice system.

But then there were the other victims of the child sexual abuse crisis: the victims of the priests Pell knew and had sometimes befriended. Gerald Ridsdale was one. Many in Australia felt Pell offered too much support to him for too long just to be trying to uphold the principle of innocence before proof of guilt.

And Pell lacked empathy for victims. Even in his prison journals, published in three volumes after his conviction was quashed, he sounded defiant. The crisis had not been his responsibility. Other institutions were just as culpable as the Catholic Church. The media was unduly hostile. The church’s enemies were poised to exploit any weakness. 

Pell did acknowledge the tragic effects of abuse on victims but his overall tone neutralised the effect of those statements. The royal commission was scathing. Yet Pell, true to type, refused to accept its conclusions as definitive. 

Pell’s supporters have continued to see him as he himself did — a martyr. They were oblivious to how distasteful this view looked to many non-Catholics for whom Australia’s most powerful Catholic was a man of great physical and intellectual stature who could have done things differently, but didn’t. 

Was the dead cardinal “a martyr”? Was his conviction on child sexual abuse charges “a cruel and brutal miscarriage of justice”? Or did he deserve everything he got? Let us know by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.