Cardinal Pell holds his head up high as he cleans up Vatican finances

During the past 15 years almost no public figure in Australia has been subjected to the amount of abuse, vilification and downright hate as Cardinal George Pell. This has ranged from smears about lack of action on sexual abuse by clergy to vague innuendo about his own behaviour and flimsy allegations about impropriety while play-fighting in a pool and changing in the dressing sheds, which, frankly, verge on the ridiculous. Ask anyone what they think about the cardinal and you will get responses on a spectrum from villain to hero.

I had lunch with Pell in his apartment in Rome in July. It was not the first time I had met him, but it was the first time I had a prolonged conversation with him.

He lives in a quiet block comfortably furnished in clerical style and the lunch was prepared and served by a sharp young American nun who, much to everyone’s astonishment, had attended the West Point military academy.

Conversation moved from the cardinal’s work at the Vatican to the scandals destroying his character in Australia. Although he seemed pessimistic about his financial reforms, he was in a very relaxed mood and — oddly, considering what is happening here — much more generally good-­humoured than I had expected.

Many people close to Pell are confident that these latest accusation will simply fade away after being drummed up another few times to further muddy his reputation when the police go to interview him. Doubtless he will take legal action because his reputation has suffered badly.

Pell is not a man to be destroyed easily. Time and again, from the beginning of his archbishopric in Sydney, enemies of the church have focused on the cardinal as the personification of wrongdoing — as in David Marr’s Quarterly Essay The Prince, a simplistic way of trying to further destabilise and disenfranchise the confused laity, most of whom don’t identify as reactionaries or conservatives.

By pounding his orthodoxy, the secular Left thought it would eventually destroy him and all that the church stands for. Destroy him and it has destroyed the church, at least in this country. But it couldn’t. He acted too honourably in trying to respond to sexual abuse when it became apparent.

The national broadcaster, having been invaded by the Gramscian long march, has a history of trying to get the cardinal any way it can. I once even had a producer of Q&A ask me, when I was being importuned to appear on that show, whether I thought “they had got him now”.

You don’t have to be Einstein to figure out what the underlying script is: “The clergy are a bunch of pedophiles and have no credibility. So forget Catholic teaching on marriage and the family.” Although Pell’s character has been almost destroyed in Australia, it is interesting to reflect on his reputation elsewhere. He is more respected in Catholic circles in Europe and in other parts of the English-speaking world, where he is known as a practical Australian who wants to reform the financial chaos that has caused the Vatican Bank to become a byword for scandal.

Nevertheless, there have been attempts to whittle down Pell’s power. The cardinal’s agenda was clearly much more ambitious when he came to Rome in 2014. His powers have been scaled back a great deal. The fact he has not yet been able to accomplish most of what he set out to do does not mean he has accomplished nothing. He clearly believes he has made irreversible and fundamental gains with regard to transparency. Certainly, the curbing of the cardinal’s influence was not because of the allegations against him in Australia, although they don’t help.

Among some Italians in the Curia, and their sympathisers outside it, the talk is that Pell holds “unfair prejudices” about Italy when it comes to financial transparency. But in Italy he is regarded by the laity as bit of a hero for taking on the Italian Curia and the Vatican Bank.

Unfortunately, as one who has had some small dealings with Italian banks, I do not think those prejudices are at all unfair. It is no secret that the Italian banking system is near collapse and most Italians keep as far away from it as possible and deal in cash whenever possible. And as the cardinal’s supporters point out, how do you reform an institution that was last audited 300 years ago?

Francis X. Rocca, Vatican correspondent of The Wall Street Journal, thinks Pell is widely admired by Catholics in the US, who are aware of his role in the financial reforms.

Of course, many of those who differ with him on moral teachings, particularly the questions of divorce and homosexuality that were so heatedly debated at the two family synods, regard him as an obstacle to “progress”. But elsewhere he doesn’t excite the strong emotions that people express in Australia.

Those close to Pell are understandably defensive of him, although it has to be said that, like most high-ranking clergymen, he does not take advice easily.

However, even though Pell and all his goals for the reorganisation of Vatican finances have not been met, he doesn’t seem to care if people love him or loathe him. But his personal reputation is a different thing and he won’t have it sullied. He is a leading representative of the universal church, which is not constrained by boundaries of time or place, so that reputation is vital. One can only admire his survival where other men might have collapsed.