Back in robes, cloaked in faith … George Pell’s light is undimmed

His face is gaunt, belly flat. But for the first time in 13 months, George Pell is robed as a prince of the Catholic Church.

George Pell at the Good Shepherd Seminary on Friday.

For the first time since he was jailed 13 months ago, George Pell is robed as a prince of the Catholic Church. His face is gaunt, belly flat.

He is philosophic about the miscarriage of justice that put him behind bars for a crime he insists he didn’t, couldn’t have committed.

He is cloaked in a deep and abiding faith.

Reflecting on the mystery of life and suffering, Cardinal Pell writes exclusively and expansively in The Weekend Australian: “Every person suffers. Everyone is confronted with a couple of questions. What should I do in this situation? And why did this happen to me? Why the coronavirus pandemic?”

In jail he endured one disappointment after another: the crushing blow of the Victorian Court of Appeal upholding his conviction for the historical sexual assault of two choirboys; the trashing of his reputation and that of the church he loves; the long wait for the High Court’s unanimous and unequivocal decision on Tuesday to acquit him.

But it is Easter, that holiest of time in the Christian calendar when the sacrifice Jesus made on the cross is solemnly commemorated and his resurrection joyously celebrated.

The black and crimson soutane might flap on Cardinal Pell, but the light in his life is undimmed. His message to a nation gripped by fear and confusion over COVID-19 is infused with the strength he finds in another conviction, the one that sustained him through thick and thin: his belief in God.

“I have just spent 13 months in jail for a crime I didn’t commit, one disappointment after another,” he writes. “I knew God was with me, but I didn’t know what He was up to, although I realised he has left all of us free.”

Cardinal Pell says this is a unique but not unprecedented moment for Australians confronting coronavirus.

“We were not alive for the Spanish flu pandemic after World War I, somewhat comparable so far,” he writes.

“And we have heard of the terrible Black Death in the 14th century, where one third of the population died in some places.

“What is new is our capacity to fight the disease intelligently, mitigate the spread.” The roots of the health services are embedded in the Christian tradition of service — the doctors, nurses and other carers performing “work of long hours and with a lively danger of infection”, he writes.

Cardinal Pell continues: “Too often the irreligious want to eliminate the cause of the suffering, through abortion, euthanasia or exclude it from sight, leaving our loved ones unvisited in nursing homes.

“Christians see Christ in everyone who suffers. Victims, the sick, the elderly, and are obliged to help. That is part of the Easter message of the risen Christ.”

One of his first acts on being released from jail was to say mass at the Carmelite Monastery in Kew in Melbourne’s leafy east, where he enjoyed a steak dinner and his first night as a free man.

After being driven to Sydney on Thursday, he is spending Easter in the Seminary of the Good Shepherd in Homebush.

Praying in the sunlit chapel, a beloved space he had renovated while he was Archbishop of Sydney in 2001, he cuts a striking figure, tall and unbowed.

He doesn’t shy away from the sexual abuse crisis engulfing religious institutions including the Catholic Church: it has damaged thousands of victims, and is bad for the church. “But we have painfully cut out a moral cancer and this is good,” he insists.

“So too some would see COVID-19 as a bad time for those who claim to believe in a good and rational God, the supreme love and intelligence, the creator of the universe.

“And it is a mystery; all suffering, but especially the massive number of deaths through plagues and wars. But Christians can cope with suffering better than the atheists can explain the beauty and happiness of life.

“And many, most understand the direction we are heading when it is pointed out that the only son of God did not have an easy run and suffered more than his share. Jesus redeemed us and we can redeem our suffering by joining it to His and offering it to God.”