"This pontificate is a disaster..." The final testament of George Cardinal Pell (d. January 10, 2023)

George Cardinal Pell prays before the body of Pope Benedict XVI lying in state, January 2023.

George Cardinal Pell is dead. 

As a man, Cardinal Pell stood accused of grievous sins before several earthly tribunals. He was convicted of some of those crimes in secular courts, and as a result, spent over a year in prison—much of it in solitary confinement. He was later acquitted and released when the High Court of Australia unanimously overturned his convictions saying that the jury likely made its decision based on faulty evidence, and that there was a significant possibility that an innocent person had been convicted. 

Was Cardinal Pell guilty of the crimes he was accused of? Or was he targeted for destruction by enemies who would stoop even so low as to manufacture false sins? In this world, we will never know. 

But now, Cardinal Pell has taken his stand before the Just Judge from whom nothing can be hidden. Whether his sins warranted mercy or damnation is in the hands of Christ, and all the faithful can do is pray that our gracious Lord will have mercy on him. 

What is clear is that George Cardinal Pell did not go out with a whimper, but with a resounding bang.

Less than a week before he died, Cardinal Pell wrote an article in the UK Spectator that is nothing less than a clarion call. The title of the article says it all: The Catholic Church Must Free Itself from this "Toxic Nightmare."

What toxic nightmare is he referring to? That would be the so-called Synod on Synodality—that useless and wasteful meeting of bishops that seems to be the very embodiment of the unofficial motto of the current pontificate: "¡Hagan lío!" or "make a mess!" Regarding the 45-page document put out by the Vatican explaining the "listening" stage of the synod, Pell calls it: "one of the most incoherent documents ever sent out from Rome."

After offering a point-by-point deconstruction of the document, Pell is left scratching his head:

What is one to make of this potpourri, this outpouring of New Age good will? It is not a summary of Catholic faith or New Testament teaching. It is incomplete, hostile in significant ways to the apostolic tradition and nowhere acknowledges the New Testament as the Word of God, normative for all teaching on faith and morals. The Old Testament is ignored, patriarchy rejected and the Mosaic Law, including the Ten Commandments, is not acknowledged.

This is a pretty harsh condemnation that should be taken very seriously by all serious Catholics.

But it gets better. 

In the spring of 2022, an anonymous letter was said to be circulating among the Cardinals signed by someone called "Demos" or the Greek word for "the common people." It was a sober reflection upon and harsh criticism of the numerous scandals which have proliferated over the past 10 years within the Church, with an unusually pointed critique of the Francis papacy. The opening sentence gives the reader a sense of what follows:

Commentators at every school, though for different reasons, with the possible exception of Father Spadaro SJ, agree that this pontificate is a disaster in many or more respects, a catastrophe.

It was revealed today that the author of this letter was none other than George Cardinal Pell.

This letter is not merely a litany of the failures of Pope Francis. It is a road map for his successor. Indeed, the second half of the letter reads more like avuncular advice from an experienced elder churchman to a man who will be faced with cleaning up a gigantic mess not of his doing. 

The entire letter is well worth reading, but the following point seems to be the most important of all, encapsulating what has gone wrong and the attitude necessary to fix it:

The new pope must understand that the secret of Christian and Catholic vitality comes from fidelity to Christ's teachings and Catholic practices. It doesn't come from adapting to the world or money.

This point is followed immediately by another that lays out the steps necessary to return from the present chaos:

The first tasks of the new pope will be the restoration of normality, the restoration of doctrinal clarity in faith and morals, the restoration of just respect for the law, and the guarantee that the first criterion for the appointment of bishops is acceptance of apostolic tradition. Theological competence and culture are an advantage, not an obstacle for all bishops and especially for archbishops. These are necessary foundations for living and preaching the Gospel.

More than anything else, the faithful need doctrinal clarity. Indeed, we thirst for it, as one can not drink the muddy slurry churned up by "¡Hagan lío!"

Pell's "Demos" letter reads like an encyclical letter written by one of the Church Fathers when faced with an ecclesiastical crisis.

Thank you, Cardinal Pell, for speaking like a believing Catholic, reminding us of our patrimony, and for standing up for the devout who have spent the past nine years taking abuse from those tasked to nurture them in faith and teach them the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

With men like Benedict XVI and Cardinal Pell passing into eternity, ordinary devout Catholics pray that Christ will raise up other bishops and cardinals with the fortitude to keep the current mess from spreading and leading even more souls to perdition. 

May the Holy Spirit, in His good time, bestow upon us a new pope who will come armed the charism of Saint Francis of Assisi who was commanded by God to "restore my Church which is falling down."

Pope Francis on Abortion ~ "Abortion is not a lesser evil. It is a crime, it is absolutely evil."

Pope Francis pulls no punches on the subject of abortion.

It can not be denied that the Catholic and secular left love Pope Francis more than any other pope in recent history. For those currently having meltdowns over the possibility that one of the most egregiously awful Supreme Court rulings in American history (Roe v. Wade) may soon be overturned (God willing!), it is perhaps well to reflect on what the Holy Father has had to say about the topic of abortion over the years.

Though it is perhaps not a topic he relishes teaching about, on those occasions when Pope Francis has spoken out against abortion, he does not mince words. Not at all. 

Here is a list of his statements against abortion from the beginning of his papacy through very recent days:

• “Abortion compounds the grief of many women who now carry with them deep physical and spiritual wounds after succumbing to the pressures of a secular culture which devalues God’s gift of sexuality and the right to life of the unborn.” April 26, 2014
  
  
• “Abortion is not a “lesser evil”. It is a crime. It is wiping out one to save another. That is what the mafia does. It is a crime, it is absolutely evil.” February 17, 2016
  
  
• “Before, it was a sin, you couldn’t kill little children, but today you can, it’s not seen as a big deal. It is a perverse new state of affairs.” November 22, 2017
  
  
• “Abortion is never the answer. Human life is sacred and inviolable and the use of prenatal diagnosis for selective purposes must be strongly discouraged, because it is the expression of an inhuman eugenic mentality, which deprives families of the possibility of welcoming, embracing and loving their weakest children.” May 25, 2019
  
  
• "The second problem, that of abortion: it's more than a problem, it's homicide, whoever has an abortion, kills. No mincing words. Take any book on embryology for medical students. The third week after conception, all the organs are already there, even the DNA... it is a human life, this human life must be respected, this principle is so clear! To those who cannot understand, I would ask this question: Is it right to kill a human life to solve a problem? Is it right to hire a hitman to kill a human life? Scientifically, it is a human life. Is it right to take it out to solve a problem? That is why the Church is so harsh on this issue, because if it accepts this, it is as if it accepts daily murder. A Head of State told me that the demographic decline began because in those years there was such a strong law on abortion that six million abortions were performed and this left a decline in births in the society of that country.” September 15, 2021
  
  
• “There is the discarding of children that we do not want to welcome with the law of abortion that sends them to the dispatcher and kills them directly. And today this has become a ‘normal’ method, a practice that is very ugly. It is really murder. Is it right to eliminate, to take a human life to solve a problem? Is it right to hire a hitman to solve a problem? That’s what abortion is.” September 27, 2021

May the Holy Spirit continue to inspire Pope Francis to speak out vigorously and regularly against the atrocity known as human abortion until this barbaric practice is never again considered a legitimate moral "choice" by anyone.

Why the Viganò Letter is Credible

Cardinal Gottfried Danneels (second from right) appears on the Loggia with
the newly elected Pope Francis in 2013. Danneels had retired under a cloud
for his audio-recorded badgering of a sex abuse victim.

The testimony written by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò has set off shockwaves. Not only does Archbishop Viganò name names of bishops and Cardinals who have covered up the sex abuse scandal, he directly implicates Pope Francis and calls on him—and his inner circle of Cardinals—to resign. To quote Archbishop Viganò’s letter directly:

“Pope Francis has repeatedly asked for total transparency in the Church and for bishops and faithful to act with parrhesia [that is, candor and the courage to speak the truth to power -ed.]. The faithful throughout the world also demand this of him in an exemplary manner. He must honestly state when he first learned about the crimes committed by McCarrick, who abused his authority with seminarians and priests."

Archbishop Viganò then provides the answer:

"In any case, the Pope learned about it from me on June 23, 2013 and continued to cover for him [ie, Cardinal McCarrick -ed.]. He did not take into account the sanctions that Pope Benedict had imposed on him and made him his trusted counselor along with [Cardinal -ed.] Maradiaga." 

These are deeply disturbing allegations and while we don’t yet know for sure whether they are completely true, we do know that they are credible. A very troubling pattern has emerged over the past few years which show that Pope Francis, at the very least, has put his personal imprimatur upon several prelates, including McCarrick, who have been disgraced over their handling of sex abuse cases or who have actively taken the side of the predators over the victims. These include the following:

1. During the infamous 2015 Synod on the Family, Pope Francis personally appointed retired Belgian Cardinal Gottfried Danneels as one of the Synod fathers. At the time, he was advised to reconsider this appointment because, among other reasons, Cardinal Danneels had tried to cover up a sex abuse and was caught doing so in an audio recording. Also, to say that Danneels was an ineffective teacher of Catholic moral teaching would be a grotesque understatement [warning, the content at the preceding link is utterly vile.] Pope Francis ignored the advice and proceeded to appoint Cardinal Danneels anyway. Danneels also bragged that he had been a leader of the so-called “Saint Gallen’s Mafia”—a group of dissident prelates which had worked to undermine Pope Benedict.


2. Earlier this year, Pope Francis defended the infamous Bishop Barros of Chile and attacked the bishop’s accusers. He insisted there was “no evidence” against Barros and said, “The day they bring me proof against Bishop Barros, then I will speak. There is not a single piece of proof against him. Everything is calumny. Is that clear?” However, it later emerged that Pope Francis had been advised by Chilean bishops not to appoint Barros in the first place because of credible accusations, but he had ignored this advice and proceeded to appoint Barros anyway. Francis only backed down afterwards when a firestorm erupted in Chile. He accepted Barros’s resignation in June of 2018.


3. Cardinal Maradiaga, who is called out specifically in the Viganò letter above, is to this day considered one of Pope Francis’s trusted advisers. He even spoke at the recently concluded World Meeting of Families in Dublin. But earlier this year, Maradiaga evinced the same dismissive attitude toward an unprecedented appeal from seminarians in his native Honduras. A letter, signed by 48 seminarians, claimed that they were being victimized by a predatory homosexual cabal in the seminary. In response, Cardinal Maradiaga attacked the seminarians, calling them “gossipers” who wished to portray their fellows in a bad light. He also apparently attempted to protect one of his underlings, Bishop Juan Jose Pineda, who had been implicated as an abuser. However, in July of 2018, Bishop Juan Jose Pineda was forced to resign after the allegations of the seminarians proved valid beyond any doubt. Despite this, and the fact that Maradiaga has also been implicated in misappropriation of Church funds, he continues to be part of Pope Francis’s inner circle.

So sadly, there is a disturbing pattern of behavior here, and it is against this backdrop that the accusations in the Viganò letter become credible. The Pope’s behavior may simply be caused by a tragic ineptitude, gross naivete or a blind desire to put loyalty to friends ahead of the truth—frankly, I prefer that one of the above be the case. Though these above would be great and possibly disqualifying failings, they at least point to the potential (however distant) for reform emanating from the Vatican. There are, however, alternative explanations that are too horrific to even consider at this point.

We will have to see how events play out. To this point, however, I remain impressed by the words of Archbishop Viganò, who said in his letter:

“My conscience requires me also to reveal facts that I have experienced personally, concerning Pope Francis, that have a dramatic significance, which as Bishop, sharing the collegial responsibility of all the bishops for the universal Church, do not allow me to remain silent, and that I state here, ready to reaffirm them under oath by calling on God as my witness.” 

He, of all the individuals involved in these sordid affairs, at least sounds like a Catholic.

May God Almighty thwart the efforts of the prince of this world to corrupt the Church.

May Jesus Christ, the Just Judge, bring down divine justice upon all of those who bring filth and scandal into the Church.

May the Holy Spirit inspire great saints to rise up and cleanse the Church.

May the Blessed Virgin Mary intercede for the faithful and encourage us during this tribulation.

St. Francis's Letter to All the Faithful

In our day, Saint Francis of Assisi is commonly portrayed as a gentle, happy-go-lucky friar who travelled around Italy preaching about being nice and blessing animals. The real Saint Francis was very far from this distorted caricature. He was a loyal follower of even the hardest teachings of Jesus Christ and a true son and soldier of the Catholic Church. He was not averse to preaching directly to the faithful in terms that would grate the soft sensibilities of many modern religious leaders. As we near the beginning of the extraordinary synod on the family, it is well to consider the words written by St. Francis in his Letter to All the Faithful:

“All those who refuse to do penance and receive the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ are blind, because they cannot see the light, our Lord Jesus Christ. They indulge their vices and sins and follow their evil longings and desires, without a thought for the promises they made. In body they are slaves of the world and of the desires of their lower nature, with all the cares and anxieties of this life; in spirit they are slaves of the devil. They have been led astray by him and have made themselves his children, dedicated to doing his work. They lack spiritual insight because the Son of God does not dwell in them, and it is he who is the true wisdom of the Father. It is of such men as these that Scripture says, their skill was swallowed up (Ps. 106: 27). They can see clearly and are well aware what they are doing; they are fully conscious of the fact that they are doing evil, and knowingly lose their souls.” Read the entire letter. 

Amazingly, despite his occasionally stringent tone, Francis succeeded in converting many and rebuilding the Church in his day. May our own Pope Francis follow in the footsteps of his illustrious namesake, Francis of Assisi, and not fear to preach the authentic truths of the Church loudly and with courage. For mercy is not imparted by redefining sin away, but by helping the sinner reject sin, despise the desire to sin, and aspire to be virtuous as Christ was virtuous.