George Pell

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George Cardinal Pell AC (born 8 June 1941), Australian clergyman, has been the Roman Catholic archbishop of Sydney since March 2001 and a Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church since October 2003. As a Cardinal he is also Priest of the Church of Santa Maria Domenica Mazzarello in Rome. Since his appointment he has become one of the best-known Christian leaders in Australia.

Life

George Pell was born in Ballarat, Victoria, and educated at Catholic schools (Loreto Convent School and St Patrick's College) at his mother's insistence, although his father was a Protestant. He gave up a chance to play professional Australian Rules Football to become a priest. He studied for the priesthood at Corpus Christi College near Melbourne, and at Propaganda Fide College in Rome.

He was ordained a priest in St Peter's Basilica on 16 December, 1966, and holds a licentiate in theology from Urban University (1967), a doctorate of philosophy in church history from the University of Oxford (1971) and a master's degree in education from Monash University, Melbourne (1982).

After graduation Pell worked as an assistant priest in parishes around Victoria. He was Visiting Scholar at Campion Hall, Oxford University, in 1979 and at St. Edmund's College, Cambridge University, in 1983. He was ordained an Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Melbourne and Titular Bishop of Scala in 1987, and was appointed as seventh Archbishop of Melbourne in 1996. In March 2001, he was appointed Metropolitan Roman Catholic Archbishop of Sydney.

Pell has been a member of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace from 1990 to 1995 and again from 2002. From 1990 to 2000 he was a member of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In April 2002, Pope John Paul II named him President of the Vox Clara Committee to advise the Congregation for Divine Worship on English translations of liturgical texts. In December 2002, he was appointed to the Presidential Committee of the Pontifical Council for the Family, having previously served many years as a Consultor to the Council.

Pell has written widely in religious and secular magazines, learned journals and newspapers in Australia and overseas and regularly speaks on television and radio. In September 1996, Oxford University Press published his Issues of Faith and Morals, written for senior secondary classes and parish groups. His other publications include The Sisters of St Joseph in Swan Hill 1922-72 (1972), Catholicism in Australia (1988), Rerum Novarum - One Hundred Years Later (1992) and Catholicism and the Architecture of Freedom (1999).

Church leader

Since Pell's elevation to the See of Melbourne, and more particularly since his translation to Sydney, he has taken a high public profile on a wide range of issues. He uses the media, particularly television, with great skill.

Pell combines this sophistication with strict adherence to Catholic orthodoxy. As his rapid promotion shows, he had the full confidence of Pope John Paul II and his closest advisers such as Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI). Since the 1960s Australia has become one of the most secularised countries in the world, and Australians have become used to Christian leaders whose public utterances are confined to occasional exhortations to peace, love and charity. An Archbishop who strongly and capably expounds Catholic doctrines in matters of personal morality, and who exerts a strong top-down hierarchical discipline within the Church, has come as a shock to Australian Catholics.

Pell has said on many occasions that he sees his mission as being to bring the Australian Church back to discipline and conformity with Rome, and then to bring Australia back to Christianity. He sees other Christian, and even non-Christian, leaders as his allies in this mission. "The most significant religious change in Australia over the past 50 years is the increase of people without religion, now about one fifth of the population," he said in 2001. "All monotheists, Christians and Jews, Muslims and Sikhs, must labour to reverse this. We must not allow the situation to deteriorate as it had in Elijah’s time, 850 years before Christ, where monotheism was nearly swamped by the aggressive paganism of the followers of Baal."

In pursuit of this objective Pell has sought to establish good relations with other Christian denominations. This is a difficult task in Sydney, which has a long tradition of sectarian hostility between Catholics and Protestants. The Sydney Anglican Church is aggressively evangelical and historically anti-Catholic, but Pell has worked co-operatively with his Anglican counterpart, Dr Peter Jensen, on political issues, while avoiding theological controversies. This is referred to in Sydney as "the ecumenism of the right."

As a cardinal, Pell was eligible to vote (a cardinal elector) in the 2005 Papal Conclave following the death of John Paul II. Given Pell's obvious favour in Rome, there had been a little speculation in the Australian media that he had an outside chance of becoming Pope himself. Aside from one Italian source, international commentary on the papal succession did not mention Pell as a contender for the position. Pell has since been mentioned as a possible successor to Joseph Ratzinger, elected Pope Benedict XVI, as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith [1].

Controversies

The area in which Pell has received most publicity has been that of Catholic attitudes to sexuality, and particularly homosexuality. "Christian teaching on sexuality is only one part of the Ten Commandments, of the virtues and vices, but it is essential for human wellbeing and especially for the proper flourishing of marriages and families, for the continuity of the human race," Pell said upon becoming Archbishop of Sydney. "Any genuine religion has two important moral tasks; firstly, to present norms and ideals, goals for our striving; and secondly, to offer aids for our weakness, forgiveness and healing for every wrong doer and sinner who repents and seeks forgiveness."

Pell has been outspoken on pre-marital sex, abortion and contraception, as well as subjects such as euthanasia and drug use. He supports Pope John Paul II's view that issues such as the ordination of women cannot be discussed within the Church and has declared that abandoning the tradition of clerical celibacy would be a 'serious blunder'[2]. His most controversial act as Archbishop of Sydney has been refusing the sacraments to known or self-declared homosexuals. "Anybody who is sinning seriously should not go to communion," he said in 2001. "So a gay person who has repented, or a gay person who is not active, is more than welcome to communion." Activists of the Rainbow Sash movement of self-declared gay and lesbian Catholics have conducted a running battle with Pell, appearing at St Mary's Cathedral, Sydney wearing rainbow sashes and requesting the sacraments, which Pell has steadfastly refused. In a city which hosts the annual Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras and has become one of the world's major gay cultural centres, this has ensured Pell continuous and mostly hostile media attention.

Pell's determination to enforce Catholic orthodoxy has made him many enemies within his own Church. "He stands for the kind of Catholicism that we saw in the Middle Ages," said Chris Sidoti, a "progressive" Catholic and formerly Australia's Human Rights Commissioner. "He is totally centred around the hierarchy, and dismissive of alternative views." Pell's defenders say that his positions are fully in line with those of the Pope and of Catholic teaching, and that it is his critics who are deviating from the Catholic view of the world. They also defend Pell against the charge that Pell is an extreme political conservative. They point out that he has condemned what he calls the "callousness" of unrestrained capitalism, has criticised the conservative government of John Howard for its hard-line policy of rejecting asylum seekers, and supported the 1999 referendum on whether Australia should become a republic.

In June 2002 Pell was accused of having sexually abused a 12-year-old boy at a Catholic youth camp in 1961, when he was a seminarian. He "stood aside" (but did not resign) as Archbishop as soon as the allegations were made public (but some weeks after the Church became aware of them). He vehemently denied all the accusations. Since the accuser declined to make a formal statement to the police, the Archdiocese of Sydney appointed Alec Southwell, a former judge and not a Catholic, to conduct an enquiry. In October Southwell found that the allegations could not be sustained, reflecting the general view in the media that the allegations, made by a man with a long criminal history, lacked credibility.

The enquiry, however, provided an opportunity to air allegations that Pell, along with other Church leaders both Catholic and Protestant, had sought to cover up past allegations of child sexual abuse and sexual exploitation by clergy. It was recalled that Pell had sought to protect Father Gerald Ridsdale, convicted of sexual offences against children, and had given evidence in support of Ridsdale at the latter's trial in 1993. His observation only a month before the allegations became public that "Abortion is a worse moral scandal than priests sexually abusing young people" provided much ammunition to those who said he had sought to deny and to minimise the importance of clerical sexual abuse.

In January 2004 Pell was confronted by an open letter published in the press by his cousin Monica Hingston, a former nun who has lived in a lesbian relationship for 19 years. Hingston said that she had twice sent the letter to Pell privately, but had received no reply. She had written the letter after the Vatican reaffirmed the Catholic teaching that practising homosexuals were "seriously depraved". She challenged Pell to "look her in the eye" and call her "corrupt, debased, vicious, vile, wicked, degenerate" - words she says are synonyms for depraved. "To read that the Vatican has declared us to be 'seriously depraved persons' has appalled and angered me," she wrote.

In response Pell issued a statement saying: "The Church's views are well known and will not change. I support them. In these situations the first 11 verses of Chapter 8 of St John's Gospel give food for thought. I wish Monica well and acknowledge the contribution she has made. I continue to regret the path she has chosen." The passage referred to by Pell is the account of the woman taken in adultery, where Jesus said "let him who is without sin cast the first stone", but also tells the woman, "go and sin no more".

Hingston said she was "not surprised" at Pell's response, because he "had to follow the Vatican line," but it saddened her. "I wanted him to make some statement about who I am as a person to him," she said. "It's very disappointing that I got no response other than scripture." She found the official Catholic teaching "insulting and degrading," she said.

External links

• Sydney Catholic Archdiocese website
• Rainbow Sash Movement
• Pell cleared of abuse charges
• Text of Monica Hingston letter to Pell

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