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. After leading Aquinas College, the Ballarat campus of the Australian Catholic University, as Principal, and working in the Ballarat East Parish of St Alipuis, he was appointed Rector at the Corpus Christi Seminary. 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 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, while retaining a strict adherence to Catholic orthodoxy. As his rapid promotion showed, he had the full confidence of Pope John Paul II and his closest advisers such as Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI).
Pell said on many occasions that he saw 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 saw 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 sought to establish good relations with other Christian denominations. This was a difficult task in Sydney, which had a long tradition of sectarian hostility between Catholics and Protestants. The Sydney Anglican Church was aggressively evangelical and historically anti-Catholic, but Pell worked co-operatively with his Anglican counterpart, Dr Peter Jensen, on political issues, while avoiding theological controversies. This was 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 was 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 was also mentioned as a possible successor to Pope Benedict as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. This position was given to William Cardinal Levada, former Archbishop of San Francisco.
Controversies
Pell was outspoken on pre-marital sex, abortion and contraception, as well as subjects such as euthanasia and drug use. His determination to enforce Catholic orthodoxy 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 said that his positions were fully in line with those of the Pope and of Catholic teaching, and that it was his critics who were deviating from the Catholic view of the world.[[Citing sources citation needed]] They also defended Pell against the charge that he was an extreme political conservative. Pell condemned what he called the "callousness" of unrestrained capitalism, 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.On sexuality
Pell has received much publicity on 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 supported Pope John Paul II's view that issues such as the ordination of women could not be discussed within the Church and declared that abandoning the tradition of clerical celibacy would be a "serious blunder.".
As Archbishop of Sydney, Pell refused 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 appeared at St Mary's Cathedral, Sydney wearing rainbow sashes and requesting the sacraments, which Pell steadfastly refused.
In January 2004 his cousin Monica Hingston, a former nun who had lived in a lesbian relationship for 19 years. published an open letter in the press. 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 was 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.
On paedophilia within the church
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.
On other religions
In 2004, speaking to the Acton Institute on the deficiencies of "secular democracy," Pell drew a parallel between Islam and Communism: "Islam may provide in the 21st century, the attraction that communism provided in the 20th, both for those that are alienated and embittered on the one hand and for those who seek order or justice on the other." An Australian Islamic spokesman, Keysar Trad, described this as inconsistent with the Pope's attempts to reach out to Muslims, and an inappropriate comparison: "Communism is a godless system, a system that in fact persecutes faith".
In a speech delivered to Catholic Business leaders at the Legatus Summit in February 2006, Pell asked the question "Can Islam and the Western democracies live together peacefully?" In examining this question, he discussed reasons for both optimism and pessimism, telling his audience: "Considered strictly on its own terms, Islam is not a tolerant religion and its capacity for far-reaching renovation is severely limited. To stop at this proposition, however, is to neglect the way these facts are mitigated or exacerbated by the human factor." He went on to contrast the "moderate Islam" of Indonesia with the growing influence of "radical Islam" in Pakistan: "These two examples show that there is a whole range of factors, some of them susceptible to influence or a change in direction, affecting the prospects for a successful Islamic engagement with democracy."
The pessimistic elements of Pell's speech provoked a strong reaction, particularly his description of Islam as "not a tolerant religion" and his observation that the Koran contained "many invocations to violence". Trad described this new speech as "totally subjective... off-the-cuff dismissal of the teachings of one of the world's great religions, certainly undermining the importance of his office.
On environmental concerns
Pell aroused criticism from Australian Greens Senator Christine Milne with the following comment in his 2006 Legatus Summit speech:- Some of the hysteric and extreme claims about global warming are also a symptom of pagan emptiness, of Western fear when confronted by the immense and basically uncontrollable forces of nature. Belief in a benign God who is master of the universe has a steadying psychological effect, although it is no guarantee of Utopia, no guarantee that the continuing climate and geographic changes will be benign. In the past pagans sacrificed animals and even humans in vain attempts to placate capricious and cruel gods. Today they demand a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.
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