Lying in state, George Pell would have been pleased by the scene in St Mary’s Cathedral

A prayer vigil for Australian Catholic Cardinal George Pell at St Mary's Cathedral in Sydney.

George Pell would have been pleased with the scene, and if the faith he professed is true, he probably was.

The roses he planted years ago on the Cathedral House balcony are flourishing, pink blooms visible from the ground. The old Jacaranda he loved, and the newer one he had planted to be there when the old one dies, look healthy.

Cardinal Pell’s successor, Archbishop Anthony Fisher, the Cardinal’s family and many of his closest friends gathered at the House on Wednesday to join his body on the last stage of its journey home, into St Mary’s Cathedral to lie in state. His funeral Mass will be offered on Thursday, followed by his burial in the crypt. That, too, has plenty of memories. The Cardinal launched books there (including at least one of his own), and used to display the winning entries of the schoolchildren’s Christmas drawing competition.

The coffin of Cardinal George Pell lies in state.

On a sultry summer morning, that would have turned his mind to a swim after work, we followed his hearse out of the gate, up St Mary’s Road, along College Street and into the Cathedral. It was a fitting farewell, those walking agreed … better in a decade’s time. Never one to voice his anxieties, even under duress (hours before he went to jail on February 27 2019 he said “Isn’t this surreal?’’ before turning his attention to a new Winston Churchill biography he was taking inside), one of his friends from Rome mentioned that he had been a little concerned about the hip operation, given his cardiac history. It was in Rome 13 years ago, working on the reform of the English translation of the Mass, that he collapsed and had a pacemaker fitted. On that occasion, he was back chairing the Vox Clara committee of English-speaking bishops at the North American College a few days later.

On Wednesday, he would not have been unduly perturbed by the loud protesters further along College Street. A much louder crowd chanted outside St Mary’s the night he was installed as Sydney’s 8th Archbishop in 2001. Hearing the news of NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet’s planned non-attendance at his funeral due to precommitments he would have been laconic, in public. In private he could be acerbic about lack of respect for the dead, as he was in our last conversation, the night before he went to hospital. On that occasion, he was annoyed about the Vatican’s allowing nearby shops to open during Pope Benedict’s funeral in St Peter’s Square, Pope Francis’s scanty sermon over his predecessor, the omission of the Roman Canon in favour of another Eucharistic prayer and curia bureaucrats making it difficult for priests to concelebrate.

Protesters outside tie ribbons to the fence. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Ben Symons

The NSW Premier, irrespective of faith, or none, belongs at such a funeral. Mr Perrottet’s staying away beggars belief given his background as captain of Redfield College and the Cardinal’s warmth towards Opus Dei, among many Catholic groups. Pre-commitments can be broken. If the Premier stopped behaving like a bunny trapped in headlights he might even draw courage from the Mass.

Inside the Cathedral on Wednesday, the sense of continuity and transcendence, the spirit of Cardinal Pell’s own courage, which had a way of rubbing off on others, and the radiance of his toddler grand-niece, whom he adored, made his loss feel bearable … just. So did St Paul’s letter to the Corinthians: “Visible things last only for a time, and the invisible things are eternal. For we know that when the tent we live in on earth is folded up, there is a house built by God for us, an everlasting home.’’

Pell’s casket arrives.

Aside from the portrait of the Cardinal to the left of the altar, across from the pulpit from where he preached most Sundays from 2001 to 2014, the Cathedral looked just as it had for his farewell Mass when he left for Rome to become the Vatican Treasurer. The sculptures of the Risen Christ and Mary Magdalene, by English sculptor Nigel Boonham, commissioned by the Cardinal still adorn the Sanctuary, forming a triptych with the main altar (blessed by Pope Benedict XVI during World Youth Day in 2008), which depicts the entombed Christ after the crucifixion. While rarely given to hyperbole, Cardinal Pell told The Australian the works were “worthy of the great 17th-century Roman sculptor and architect Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini’’. He wanted them to focus attention on the mystery of Redemption.

It might seem irreverent to mention it, but the Cardinal would probably have been pleased his coffin lid was closed. As he said to a friend after a royal lying-in-state a few years ago: “I don’t think I’d like that … people filing past, looking up me nose.’’ On such occasions, he liked to revert to the lingo he heard in the Royal Oak pub, growing up in Ballarat.

Oh George, we miss you so much already.

Tess Livingstone is George Pell’s biographer