George Pell case: A day of steak, veggies and prayers … and, above all, the delight of being free

It was a Tuesday in Holy Week like no other for Cardinal George Pell in his 53 years in the priesthood.

Cardinal George Pell enters a building within the Carmelite Monastery in Kew, Melbourne, on Tuesday after being released from Barwon prison. Picture: ABC News

It was a Tuesday in Holy Week like no other in his 53 years in the priesthood.

On the threshold of the mysteries of Easter, for the first time in 405 days George Pell shared a congenial lunch with his legal team — steak and vegetables — then took a leisurely walk in a large garden.

On a tumultuous and frenetic day, it afforded him a touch of solitude — but not the often dismal solitude he has lived through in solitary confinement for the past 13 months and 10 days.

He was on safe and familiar ground in an enclosed nuns’ monastery in Melbourne’s eastern suburb of Kew. More important than the lunch or the company, however, was his offering a private Mass — his first since the morning of February 27 last year, the fateful day he travelled to court to be transferred to the Melbourne ­Assessment Prison.

He told a friend the walk and the Mass were “a great blessing and I have much to be thankful for’’.

For Cardinal Pell, Tuesday began in his cell at Barwon prison near Geelong, where he sat, alone, as the High Court announced its verdict. His lawyers joined him shortly afterwards. While he was delighted, he was also calm.

The 7-0 verdict that cleared him brought an end to a legal saga that has stretched for more than 1500 days since news first broke in February 2016 that police were ­secretly investigating him.

A friend who spoke to the cardinal hours after his release said he wanted to thank the friends, but most especially the strangers, whose letters and messages meant so much to him on the inside.

On some days in the lead-up to Christmas he received as many as 50 cards and letters a day.

Ever the pastoral-minded priest since his ordination in Rome 53 years ago, he reached out to the many other prisoners who wrote to him. He has had some interesting correspondence, apparently. It also helped on a very limited budget that sending letters to other prisoners was free.

“I don’t want to say anything further at this stage until I read the full judgment and have some time to reflect,” he told the friend.

“However, I am incredibly grateful to all those people who have supported me during this really challenging time.

“The number of letters and cards I received from people here and overseas was quite overwhelming. I really do want to thank them most sincerely.”

A nun opens the gates for a visitor to the Carmelite Monastery in Kew. Picture: Aaron Francis

Faith, belief in his innocence and writing were his mainstays in jail. They sustained him and kept him “on an even keel’’. “I now understand why Solzhenitsyn’s books were so long!’’ he wrote to one friend.

Cardinal Pell penned about 300,000 words in 13 months. Much of it is about the case, some of it about life inside, and some of it about other topics.

By coincidence, his time at the Carmelite Monastery in Kew on Tuesday was an opportunity for him to venerate the relics of a saint he has long admired — Saint ­Therese of Lisieux, a French Carmelite nun who died in 1897, at the age of 24.

Cardinal Pell leaving prison. Picture: David Geraghty

Her relics, and those of her parents, saints Zelie and Louis Martin, have been touring Australia for about four months, attracting large crowds until the coronavirus forced the closure of churches.

Catholics venerate saints’ relics in a way that is similar to people praying at the graves of loved ones. And in the early days of Christianity, churches were often built over the relics of saints.

The cardinal may well have pondered how different it felt to have swapped one set of high walls — those of a prison, aimed at protecting the community from criminals — for the equally high walls of the monastery, which offered him protection and peace from a world that didn’t universally welcome his acquittal and freedom. Police in marked and unmarked cars and a large media contingent gathered outside the imposing set of buildings, set among manicured gardens, but there was no sign of Cardinal Pell.

The monastery’s high walls will afford the cardinal some privacy. Picture: Aaron Francis

A nun dressed in a brown habit briefly came outside the monastery gates to accept a delivery, but aside from the delivery of what ­appeared to be a case of wine, there was little movement outside.

Famed for its ornately decorated church, the monastery has been home to a community of Carmelite nuns since 1929. “The religious life of the Nuns of Our Lady of Mount Carmel at Carmelite Monastery Melbourne is contemplative in its prayer, eremitical in its spirit of retirement from the world, and monastic in its usages and Liturgy, in worship and divine praise,” the monastery’s website says.

“The calling to the contemplative life is an invitation from God to follow a more constant and higher form of prayer and penance and practice of virtue which one lovingly fulfils through a daily ­fidelity to the observance of the vows of obedience, chastity and poverty.” The nuns live a life of community service, deriving some of the income which funds their work from a perfume and skincare range known as “Monastique”.