Cardinal Robert Pell’s Legacy w/ Tess Livingstone | Fr. Patrick Briscoe & Fr. Joseph-Anthony Kress
May 12, 2025
This transcription was generated using AI technology. Please note that there may be errors or inconsistencies.
Fr. Patrick
This is Father Patrick Briscoe.
Fr. Joseph Anthony
And this is Father Joseph Anthony Kress.
Fr. Patrick
Welcome to Godsplaining. Thanks to all who support us. If you enjoy our podcast, please consider making a monthly donation to us on Patreon. Be sure and to like and subscribe to Godsplaining wherever you listen to your podcasts. Friends, we are so excited to welcome to this special Guestsplaining episode the very talented Australian journalist Tess Livingstone.
Tess. Welcome to Godsplaining.
Tess Livingstone
Thank you very much, Father Patrick. It’s great to be with you.
Fr. Patrick
We’re so excited to have you on, because, I mean, not just because you’re an incredibly accomplished journalist. You would. That would be a reason enough to have you on the show, but because of your recent projects. So for those of you who don’t know who test is. Tess is a veteran Australian journalist who’s written on politics, economics, strategic policy, the culture wars, I mean, you name it.
And Tess has talked about it somewhere. She’s written editorials for The Australian for the Weekend Australian since 2007, and was formerly chief of staff op editor, op ed editor and education editor for the Courier Mail. So we’ve got tons of bylines from all of your projects, Tess. But most importantly, she is the author, in my view, of the recent biography of George Cardinal Pell, which has just come out from Ignatius Press.
And that is probably the biggest reason we’re happy to welcome you to the show.
Very excited for the last couple. It does. No, it’s it’s wonderful. And I love I love that it’s read. Yes. Our cardinal, our dear cardinal was very red blooded.
Tess Livingstone
Yeah. That’s right I remember the press conference on the day I was, I think October 2003, where he was made a cardinal and he gave a press conference in Rome, and he mentioned in that with quite a straight face, Cardinals have got to be prepared to shed their blood for Christ. And people sort of looked at each other.
But he didn’t say it in any holier than thou way. It was just the fact he he was a very dedicated character, even though he was a very with a humorous character who got on very well with young people and, shared a lot of their interests, particularly sports. But, he was a very dedicated character. Yes. I think he’d like those colors that Father Scott picked out for Ignatius.
Fr. Patrick
Well, why don’t we begin at maybe some of our listeners who have tuned in, maybe they they don’t know who Cardinal Pell was. Maybe they know that he was a cardinal from Australia. But if they don’t have a real sense of a biography, what’s a quick way that you might introduce him?
Tess Livingstone
Okay. You see, maybe start I think I might start at the end because that really is what sets his life apart. He’s one of a handful of cardinals in the history of the church who was jailed unfairly, I think, for his beliefs for, a whole lot of reasons. But anyway, totally unfairly, in a process that was eventually quashed by the High Court of Australia, that’s the equivalent of ours, your Supreme Court.
But he spent 404 days in solitary confinement, not allowed to say mass, cut off from his friends continual strip search, as it was hardly. And he was, I suppose you’d put it framed and convicted on child sex abuse offenses so that looking back on them, it was totally unblemished. He could not have done what he was accused of doing because he was accused of attacking two choirboys after mass at Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne, when the sacristy was full, priests coming and going, servers were putting candles away in the same room and he was down the back of the cathedral greeting people anyway.
However, the whole legal process went through and, he was jailed and he lost his first appeal. And then he took the High Court of Australia to clear him. Seven nil. So that in a nutshell, his that’s the latter part of his life. Then he went back and lived in Rome a lot. He also spent some time in Australia with friends of friends and family.
But he left a huge impact on the church. In his latter years, he wrote a pretty controversial memo, that was saw in demos. Other other Cardinals were involved in this as well, criticizing certain aspects of the direction of the Tower of Church. He was an outspoken person. Some of you, all listeners fathers may remember him from World Youth Day 2008, in Sydney, where he was a spectacular host of that event.
And, look, I’ll never forget that opening his, sermon of his on the banks of Sydney Harbor at Barangaroo. Talking about this sermon is dedicated not to the 99 sheep who’ve managed to get into the fold, but the one who’s left out, who’s feeling sorry, lonely, isolated, confused. If was, say something. So that really was. That’s referred to in the book.
Some young people will remember him from there. Others will remember him visiting Rome. He brought a lot of Australian groups to other World Youth days. He was a very pastorally sensitive and pastorally active cardinal, bishop and priest and of course, others in the field will know about his very major work with seminary and Catholic university reform.
Fr. Joseph Anthony
Yeah. I excuse me, I like when you mentioned that my first experience of the Cardinal was at World Youth Day. I remember watching, him receive the Holy Father and welcome, all of the pilgrims to, to Australia, for that great event and so, you know, as you said, we’ll start at the end and kind of roll it backwards to talk about the Cardinal.
But I would like to just kind of say, how was the Cardinal and how did he interact or why was hosting World Youth Day in Australia? Why was that so important for him and how he embraced the world? The church, the Holy Father and all of these youth to, to Australia for that?
Tess Livingstone
Well, he was always very much in the forefront of the like John Paul, the Second’s church reforms and his efforts at evangelization to bring young people closer to God through pastoral activity and part of that, of course, is, you know, it was World Youth Day, so that was very important to him. And yes, he thought Australians had trekked to all corners of the globe throughout the world.
Youth days. We’d been to Rome, we’d been to the Philippines, we’d been to North America. True, he sort lit the world, come down under change, and people were only two delighted to do us and and to see somewhere different. It meant it was held in July, which was our winter. But, the Sydney winter was beautiful, sunny and mild, and most of those who came absolutely enjoyed it.
And Pope Benedict did some great things. When he was in Sydney, he opened a new library at Notre Dame University, which Cardinal Pell was instrumental in setting up in Sydney. It was a it’s Australia’s first Catholic law school and medical school. Wow. Yeah, Benedict really seemed to. He seemed to enjoy his time in Australia. It was a fantastic way.
Fr. Patrick
One of the things test that I admire most about Cardinal Pell is his sense of the priesthood. And you get this impression from from people who were his close friends, his confidence that he that he, as you say, he was very pastoral, but meaning he was genuinely a very accessible man. And he was very kind, very compassionate. And I wonder if you could say a little bit about how he carried that through, as a priest, maybe as a priest before his ordination, as a bishop and certainly before his time as a cardinal.
Can you give us a sense of how Cardinal Pell viewed the priesthood and how he lived his life as a priest?
Tess Livingstone
I think he believed priests needed to be hands on in their ministry. Excuse me. I’ve got a bit of a cold. He really, When? For instance, after he was ordained in Rome, he went to study history for a doctorate at Oxford. And he was very his old professors there had said Saint Edmund’s College, the Jesuit college where he lived.
They remembered him as being very pastorally active. He helped out in a lot of parishes with weekend masses, he said. The first Catholic mass at Eton College in many years, he was always on the mission, in a sense long before he became a a, a curate, which he did after he returned to Australia from Oxford. Then after his time as a curator, the place for oh was Managua tag.
Anyway, it was up on the New South Wales Victorian border, way out in the country. He set up the Catholic Teachers College in the Diocese of Ballarat, and he didn’t just run it and oversee the courses. He had a weekly mass for the students Monday at lunchtime, and he would preach on different areas relevant to their faith lives.
He was always on mission in one way or in one way and another. He edited the Ballarat Catholic newspaper for a while and the same thing. He used that opportunity, for example, if there was about if there was a special edition on Anzac Day, the big war Memorial Day in Australia to talk about the the rights and wrongs of just wars, of the nature of sacrifice, of the generosity of those who gave their lives.
For example, in World War Two, he rarely missed a teaching opportunity. He was actually a born teacher. A lot of people thought he would be an academic in his career, and that. But after a little while running that teachers college, he was appointed to run the seminary in Melbourne, and from there as an auxiliary bishop. And he was on his way.
Fr. Joseph Anthony
As you talked about, like how he became on his way and in the different positions he held, one of the things that he you, I guess I’ve always just associated with, Cardinal Pell’s name is whenever he was chosen to lead something, he was going to reform it, and he was going to lead it in a new direction.
Fr. Joseph Anthony
This is he was never satisfied with maintenance and just keeping things the way that they were. He was always.
Tess Livingstone
You know, giving it new.
Fr. Joseph Anthony
Life in reforming it.
Tess Livingstone
Easy option. That’s right. No. And he was as that’s probably why he was picked up by Father Anthony, Father Joseph Anthony to do various things. For example, right when he was an auxiliary bishop in Melbourne, he was chosen to lead Caritas Australia, the gift giving agency, aid agency for the Catholic Church. And there was plenty of reform needed there because he soon found out that a proportion of the money being given to the Philippines was going to communist organizations, so that required a major overhaul.
I know it is unbelievable to think that what happened, father, but it did, and that he gave that an absolutely huge overhaul when he was head of the seminary in Melbourne. He put out a memo called A Few Small Changes. That was very much a public approach. The few small changes, you know, people outside the seminary might have thought they amounted to very much.
But students would attend one morning mass, awake at one morning mass a day. They would have a formal Sunday lunch. There would be evening prayer and the ruckus that caused was incredible. At the time, it was a mass.
Fr. Patrick
You’re describing these things. That’s just a basic seminary.
Tess Livingstone
Yeah, a basic seven.
Fr. Patrick
Those are the those are the fundamental expectations.
Tess Livingstone
Yeah. The people who funded the place would just be absolutely shocked to find out that those things were basic. You know, as he said at the time, in my day in the seminary, we had we had night prayer and light. So he said, well, he got to me. The rector, he found it was, night out and it was not a night out.
Tess Livingstone
Basically. Yeah. So he brought an end to that.
Fr. Joseph Anthony
And light prayer. Yeah.
Tess Livingstone
Light prayer and night light nights and nights out. Yes. That was not that would satisfy him, but I was quite stubborn. I’ll give you an idea of what the atmosphere was like at the time. He, where I interviewed him early on for this project years, years ago, when he was still in very good health. He said,
Oh, yes. He said, I managed to put on better diction and devotion once. And I said, well, once a month, once a week. He said, once in three years. That’s how fierce the opposition was at the time. It really was. He had to battle through. And he realized that, that if you’re going to reform the seminary, it has to be done by the diocesan bishop.
So when he became archbishop of Melbourne, seminary reform was the top of his list. So yeah, that was a reform project that was absolutely top of his list. He brought the seminary head from a rather ugly old cement building out in the outer suburbs into an old and disused but very beautiful inner city parish, quite close to the cathedral.
And he had that chapel overhauled, and that’s where the seminary is now. So he’s left an incredible legacy of reforms like that. That wasn’t the only thing. Of course, he had to reform that. The big what came later, of course, in 2013, 2014, when Pope Francis appointed in to the Vatican finances. But, reform was part of his life from an early age.
Fr. Patrick
Yes. Well that is that’s very convenient because that leads to one of my next questions, Tess, which, which was that I wanted to ask why was it, do you think that Pope Francis chose Cardinal Pell to be among his closest collaborators because, of course, he was a member of that that very special cabinet of cardinals that Pope Francis consulted.
And I wondered if you could shed some light on why it was that the Holy Father had chosen Cardinal Pell, to to work on some of these projects.
Tess Livingstone
Look, I think it showed good judgment on Pope Francis’s part, a good sense that he knew. And the matter was discussed very much at the pre conclave meetings that he knew major reform was needed. And he I think he realized that Cardinal Pell would have the personality and determination to drive through. He wasn’t wrong there, as the old guard soon found out.
And they weren’t too happy about including many of Francis’s closest friends. But Francis very much acknowledged the importance of his efforts, even if he didn’t always back to them or agree with them. It was a very hard to understand the dynamics of what was going on there. But, yeah, I think it was a very good choice. I think give earlier popes had made better choices about financial management.
It would have been, the Vatican might have been in better shape financially.
Fr. Joseph Anthony
Having such a strong leader, but, you know, Australia being kind of the very edge of the world and the edge of the Catholic world in some respects, you know, Cardinal Pell became.
Tess Livingstone
The world voice. Yes.
Fr. Joseph Anthony
Yes.
Tess Livingstone
Yeah. So I would say this and the world spreads out around us.
Fr. Joseph Anthony
But Cardinal Pell became this voice for Australian Catholics and just a robust voice in so many ways. How was it when he actually left for Rome and took up the kind of secretariat for, the economy and things like that? How was he able to kind of stay connected to Australia and the Australian church, and how was the church able to stay connected to him during that process?
Well, it’s because obviously.
Tess Livingstone
It’s fascinated by him and he. Okay. Guide coverage. And his work in the Vatican was of genuine interest to serious newspapers, including credentialed newspapers. Also, he didn’t hesitate when occasions arose to wade into the public square and offer an opinion or two when he thought it was pertinent to do so. I’ll give you one example. May Americans, you would be fully aware of the importance of the aukus agreements between the US and Australia, the defense pact, which is really aimed to strengthen the South Pacific against the rise of China.
And, at one stage early on with that pact, a very senior Vatican cardinal spoke out against it and said, it might encourage warmongering and hostile attitudes. What the cardinals, what the Vatican Cardinal was say was reflecting China’s line. China loathes office, as you probably realize. Anyway, Cardinal Pell waded in very quickly and he said that agreement has the full backing of the United States and Australia and both sides of Australian politics.
He was a heavy hitter years. He he didn’t miss a beat. Look, he wasn’t a Ranger type of person. When he spoke out, he spoke very forcefully, but he picked his issues well. And the interested, he continued, had very much the interest in his successor in Sydney, your confreres, Archbishop Fisher and his work attitude altered Australia.
He was missed very, very much missed.
Fr. Patrick
Test. It’s hard to, come up with even a litany, frankly, of things that things that we ought to point to. You know, we began, of course, by talking about, the, the, the outrageous injustices perpetrated against Cardinal Pell. But what what do you think are the most salient points of his legacy? What more and and by that, what I really want to look to are what do you think are his most lasting achievements?
What are the things that 100 years from now, people are going to look back on and say, okay, George Pell.
Tess Livingstone
I think a hundred years from now, people will look at those three prison journals and say, this was a model of grace under pressure and stuff, right? They absolutely display the man’s faith. His optimism, his lack of bitterness. I think that will be part of it. It will be noted that he had a major role in modernizing and reform the Vatican finances, which, frankly, they had to be off to places to go broke.
And I gather that, that effort is still underway and, that’ll be part of it. And I think some of his other writings, too, he’s produced 3 or 4 books of his sermons. Oh. I had the pleasure of editing two of them. One has been out of fried, and the other one was test everything, hold fast to what is good, and then, yeah, I think that I think his writings will be remembered.
And I think to the whole incident that how could he be bishop in modern Australia to be jailed on such blatantly unfair charges and lose an appeal and then have the whole thing overturned by the highest court in the land seven bill before he died, Cardinal Pell believed a proper inquiry was needed into his whole incident, into the whole case against him and what was behind it.
Like you probably know that case started in 2030, when he was still in Australia and police started something called Operation Tethering. It was a get Pell exercise. Let’s have a look at George Pell and see if he’s offended against anyone. Now they were no charges or supplied somebody with that stage, but they went after him anyway. It was incredible how how that could have all happened.
And that’s something I think Australia still has to face.
Fr. Patrick
Do you think I’m I’m glad you. But you brought up of course the, the ongoing sense of it because said because despite the fact, that the cardinal is past and we do have many yeah, wonderful lasting testaments. You know, I have all three volumes of the prison journals. I, I just think they’re magnificent. Despite that fact, we still we still have the, the unresolved situation of the case.
Do you think, do you think there’s a will for someone to really look into this? Do you think that we will get more light on what actually happened, or will it just be lost to the sands of time?
Tess Livingstone
Look, I hope someone can crack it open. Some of my colleagues on The Australian newspaper has tried very, very hard. Unless there is the sort of court case in Rome or inquiry in Australia that compels witnesses to tell the truth, it’s going to be very hard. And the trial is already starting to run told. But it would be wonderful to know what really happened and why.
Fr. Joseph Anthony
When we when we look at that time, you know, his prison journals are, just so, so intimate. And I open in in many ways we can give a sense of, you know, like you mentioned, 400, over 400 days in, in isolation. And how was he able to persevere through that? And just to see such a witness of the perseverance and dependance and trust in the Lord, even being unjustly, isolated in that way from knowing, the cardinal before his jail time.
And then even through all of that, can you give a sense of what it was that helped him to persevere through such an injustice?
Tess Livingstone
What he said help to father was he went back in some ways to the lessons he learned to these early seminary days of the organized regular day, a time to rise and get up at time, to have breakfast at tide, to pray that he would go out to the exercise yard and he would enjoy sweeping out the leaves and things, just to get some sub and to get outside and to hear the birds sing.
He missed all that terribly. He stuck to that. And then he would answer a lot of letters. A lot of prisoners wrote to him, and he detected a real pastoral need among them to observe their lessons. So that took up a lot of his day, and he filled in the time very productively. He was never a person to sit around and watch TV all day, though he did get to watch a bit more that he used to do, and he certainly enjoyed watching sport.
Sport matches. But he filled these days in. He said it was the regulation day in the cemetery that stood, made good, said.
Fr. Patrick
Wow test by way of conclusion, because the you know, these things are, can be very serious, very grave and very ultimate, you know, that like Cardinal Pell was just had a towering figure. He was a it was a larger than life man in every respect. And so when we talk about legacy or even the, the, the unsettled cases here, I it just all be overwhelming.
How is it that you are going to remember Cardinal Pell? How is it that you test Livingston are going to to remember him?
Tess Livingstone
I’ll remember him as a very kind but very rational person who had, an intense interest in important issues. And he used to read the court, the newspaper. I worked for, the Australian cover to cover. It was one of his absolute grievances, a jail. He couldn’t afford to buy it every day. So he would buy it on the Saturday.
I’ll remember him as intensely loyal a great friend as he was to many people. He kept up his friendships remarkably well. A person whose depth of knowledge and writings were just extraordinary. But who, at the end of the day, always really did strive to do the right thing and lead by example more than, more than admonishing people.
Fr. Patrick
Test. Thank you so much for joining us. You know, we’ve just scratched the surface here, and I hope that we can introduce Cardinal Pell a little bit more to someone who maybe is, unfamiliar with this legacy and, and nurtured those who love him. So thanks so much for joining us.
Tess Livingstone
Thank you for having me on. And I hope people who read the book find something of interest in us.
Fr. Patrick
Friends, we can’t encourage you enough. Go out and pick up Tess’s marvelous biography of Cardinal Pell. I’m about halfway through it myself and I, and I’m enjoying it immensely. It’s a fabulous read, so it’s certainly worth your time. And turning to you, the listener, as we wrap up here, we just want to thank you for all of your support for God’s planning.
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