How Cardinal George Pell’s darkest prison days only made him softer

Being jailed for offences he always said he did not commit gave Cardinal George Pell time to reflect, forgive and soften. But the dark days didn’t break him.

Being imprisoned would be enough to break most people.

Those who knew George Pell well say it made him a better person.

Since his release from 13 months in solitary confinement in April 2020 until his death this week, friends of Australia’s most senior churchman say he was never bitter over his imprisonment.

Instead, the experience strengthened his faith and conviction.

Anthony Fisher, Pell’s successor as Archbishop of Sydney, believes prison made Pell a softer man.

“Most of us don’t know the experience of being unjustly imprisoned, but we could expect it would embitter us,” he said this week.

“In his case it seemed to make him, if anything, gentler and kinder and more forgiving.

“He was a man of deep convictions and he stood up for them and he argued for them. What people didn’t see was there was a softer side of George Pell.

“He had a great concern for the poor, and he was constantly helping poor people in a way the world will never know about.”

Archbishop Fisher describes the Cardinal as the “greatest Churchman Australia has ever produced.”

Cardinal George Pell has been described by Archbishop of Sydney Anthony Fisher as the ‘greatest Churchman Australia has ever produced’. Picture: Gregorio Borgia

But he was plagued by criticism about his unrelenting conservative views.

While he may have become softer in lieu of his prison experience, he made no apologies for his commitment to the Catholic faith.

He railed against same-sex marriage, contraception, and abortion, dubbing the latter: “a worse moral scandal than priests sexually abusing young people”.

The public at large, and many inside the church, found his conservative views unfathomable.

But he was never one to be swayed by public opinion.

“The really important issue for the church is, do we teach publicly what Christ taught?” he said in an interview with EWTN News last year.

“Some of those teachings are quite unpopular. As a church leader, should you speak out on issues where you know you’re not going to get the popular vote?

“We have an obligation to keep presenting the teachings of Christ and the teachings of the Catholic Church.

“Our society will be deeply diminished to the extent it moves radially away from the Christian teachings on love, and service, and forgiveness.”

In the same interview, Pell acknowledged he got things wrong.

Archbishop Anthony Fisher said prison made George Pell a softer man. Picture: Chris Pavlich.

“One mistake I think I did make, media wise, was not to project myself that showed that I was human,” he said.

“I’m not here to increase the cult of personality. If I had allowed myself to be seen as somebody who didn’t always have two horns, and was totally unsympathetic, it might have helped the reception of my message.

“My biggest consolation now, is whatever my imperfections and foolishness, I haven’t thrown my life away on some nonsense cause, like just making money for myself.

“It doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things what people think of me.”

In another interview with the BBC, Pell also admitted he could have acted with more empathy.

“That’s probably my personal style, I’m a bit old school, buttoned up, I think there are many worse things than the stoics,” he said.

“What is much more important than words is what you do to help people. In the Melbourne Response in five years, we helped something like 300 people, that’s significant.”

Cardinal George Pell was convicted, imprisoned and subsequently acquitted on five sex abuse charges. Picture: David Caird.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Response to Child Sexual Abuse was scathing of the Melbourne Response, introduced in 1996 by Pell while Archbishop of Melbourne.

The scheme was one of the Church’s first to offer redress to victims of paedophile priests.

But the commission found the scheme actually discouraged victims from going to police, and worked to obfuscate the removal of paedophiles within the church’s ranks.

It also released the church of any further liability but capped payments to survivors at $50,000, later increasing the maximum to $75,000.

The commission also found Cardinal Pell knew about child abuse by colleagues as early as the 1970s.

He had also been involved in the shuffling of evil paedophile Gerald Ridsdale while working as a consulter to Ballarat bishop Ronald Mulkearns in 1982.

The findings of the commission will forever stain his reputation.

As will the legal saga that led to his conviction, imprisonment and subsequent acquittal on five child sex abuse charges.

Cardinal Pell had previously been accused of sexually abusing a 12-year-old boy, which was investigated by the Southwell inquiry which handed down its findings in 2002

The allegations made against the then Archbishop of Melbourne were unsubstantiated.

A lawyer, who did not want to be named, said he had gotten to know Cardinal Pell almost two decades ago and found it difficult to believe any of the accusations levelled against him.

“It rattled me a bit,” he said.

“I really got on well with him. I found it hard to believe.

“But paedophiles are known for having two faces, and maybe he was a paedophile, but you have to keep an open mind.

“Everyone is in one camp or the other. You have to be open to the possibility, but I didn’t believe it.”

In his darkest hours, Pell relied on his personal motto to sustain him: “Be Not Afraid.” Picture: Getty Images.

There is no denying, though, that Cardinal Pell was a polarising figure.

Pell believed he was “set up” by his Vatican enemies who conspired with the mafia to have him accused of being a paedophile.

It had all the intrigue of a Dan Brown novel — a conspiracy between the church’s highest ordained priests and their alleged links to organised crime.

It was a conspiracy he believed until his death.

Inquiries were made as to whether witnesses were paid as the Cardinal faced the trial of his life.

At the time he was charged, he was among the most powerful Catholics, as the Vatican’s head of Secretariat of the Economy.

He was directed by Pope Francis to unravel years of financial corruption within the church, and Pell believed his work was central to his persecution.

The Vatican’s anti-Pell camp were desperate to stop him dredging up financial misdeeds, the Cardinal believed.

Sources with impeccable knowledge of the Cardinal’s conspiracy became convinced themselves.

Cardinal George Pell with Bishop Anthony Fisher in 2008.

A federal investigation into a Vatican funds transfer to Australia of more than $1.1 million in the same years Cardinal Pell was charged with historical sex crimes still remains unresolved.

But as the Cardinal himself admitted, there wasn’t a shred of evidence to back them.

In his darkest hours Pell relied on his personal motto to sustain him: “Be Not Afraid”.

He chose it, as is customary, when he was first called to be a bishop as a reflection of his beliefs and convictions.

Those close to him say the simple creed sustained him throughout his life especially in the face of increasing criticism over his conservatism as he rose through the ranks of the church.

Along with prayer, and daily writings that eventually culminated in a three volume canon of prison diaries, Pell emerged from jail a content man.

Those diaries detail the humiliation and mundane routine of prison life.

Of being strip-searched by guards who thought him innocent, to his daily ritual of prayer, reading, cleaning his cell and responding to thousands of letters.

Of how he tried to pray himself to sleep after being woken while on suicide watch, and the encounter with another inmate in the “small grotty” exercise yard.

He detailed a fastidious reading of news about his case as he prepared for his appeal, and plans to stop fighting for his innocence in a moment of desperation.

And he explained an unexpected lack of animosity toward his accusers.

One of Pell’s biggest challenge’s in jail was being unable to celebrate mass.

“I have felt more exasperated by one or two of the opposition lawyers and some journalists than with my accusers,” he wrote.

Being unable to celebrate mass remained the Cardinal’s biggest challenge.

For the first time in many decades, he faced Sundays alone without a church.

Instead, when he was able to learn to set his alarm, he turned to Mass For You At Home, broadcast at 6am, and US-based televangelists for his spiritual fix.

As well as the mundane aspects of prison life, Pell used his diaries to reflect on bigger issues.

Despite repeated criticisms he was indifferent to the broader crisis of child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church, the issue was never lost on him.

“The paedophilia crisis remains the greatest blow the Church has suffered in Australia,” he wrote just weeks after being imprisoned.

“So many terrible crimes, and so many among them horrendous.”

In a later entry he noted: “part of the paedophilia crisis is the folly of the bishops.

“Few bishops, if any, suspected the enormity of the crisis; few, even among the experts, recognised the extent of the personal damage done to many victims.”

The Cardinal’s barrister, Robert Richter KC, said he was glad he did not suffer in his final days and remembered a man with a mighty intellect and unflinching faith in God.

“As an atheist I found it difficult to believe that the Cardinal was such a man of faith. It was difficult for me to understand that.

“But I came to the view he did. We had theological discussions along the way. We grew to respect one another in an affectionate way.

“I’m sorry that he died and glad he didn’t suffer in any way.”