THE GEORGE PELL I SAW YESTERDAY
I talked to Cardinal George Pell yesterday, after he was freed from jail after serving 405 days for a crime he could not have committed. The interview will be shown on Sky News on Tuesday at 7pm, but I should tell his many concerned supporters about the man I saw and how he seems to be coping.
I talked to Cardinal George Pell yesterday, after he was freed from jail after serving 405 days for a crime he could not have committed.
The interview will be shown on Sky News on Tuesday at 7pm, but I should tell his many concerned supporters about the man I saw and how he seems to be coping.
He is not a broken man. At times angry, and rightly, at the astonishing failures - to put it mildly - of state institutions that had hounded him into jail and kept him there. What he said of them I will leave to Tuesday.
He also looked tired and older, and was much thinner. But he is also remarkably strong. I think his faith has been critical there.
He seemed to have been sustained by all the mail and prayers he received, and by the remarkable support of fellow prisoners.
That said, he said things about his future that suggest he is retiring from the culture wars of which he's now been such a great casualty. I can't be sure about that. These are early days and he seemed, naturally, to be struggling to adjust to all that has happened.
I can't be sure that he will resist for long the call to struggle. But he is soon to turn 79, and can be forgiven for thinking he has done as much as may be called for from any man.
He smiled a lot. In my three hours with him, only one hour of which was the interview, he was at his most passionate and happy when discussing Biblical texts and history over lunch. As we waited for the set up, he kept diving away for books and references to support our discussion of Job, for instance - the meaning of that most aposite book, and the date it was supposed to have been written.
He lives for now in the grounds of a seminary - in a comfortable cottage that is very simply furnished. One room has been converted into his private chapel, with the altar covered with a cloth on which has been embroidered his favorite words from the Bible: Be Not Afraid.
And Jesus came and touched them, and said, Arise, and be not afraid.