A Kaleidoscope of Recollections of George Cardinal Pell

Michie · Jul 26, 2025

The “different short essays reflect different shades of the personality of a man who was anything but one-dimensional,” says Tracey Rowland, who compiled the collection Remembering George Cardinal Pell.

The late Cardinal Pell was a larger-than-life figure known for his outspoken orthodoxy and bluntness, as well as for being infamously jailed and then dramatically exonerated by the Australian courts.

But what was Pell like among friends, colleagues, and those he interacted with in a wide array of private and public settings? Remembering George Cardinal Pell: Recollections of a Great Man of the Church, compiled by noted theologian Tracey Rowland and published recently by Ignatius Press, gathers over three dozen essays by laity, religious, priests, and bishops who knew Pell as a friend, mentor, shepherd, and co-worker.

Among the contributors are Cardinal Gerhard Müller, George Weigel, Joanna Bogle, Andrew Bolt, Bishop Peter Elliott, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Sister Mary Grace, S.V., Canon Alexander Sherbrooke, Rev. Jerome Santamaria, and many more.

Tracey Rowland recently corresponded with CWR about her friendship with Cardinal Pell, and some of the insights and surprises found in this new book.

CWR: How did this book come about? With so many contributors, how did you pull it all together? What sort of criteria did you set?

Continued below.

A Kaleidoscope of Recollections of George Cardinal Pell

www.catholicworldreport.com

Bob Crowley · Jul 27, 2025

I lifted this from the link in the post.

A Kaleidoscope of Recollections of George Cardinal Pell

www.catholicworldreport.com

The second difficult cultural reference for non-Australians is “the Split”. This expression refers to the division within the Australian Labor Party (ALP) in 1955. The short story is that Communist-controlled trade unions exercised a huge influence over some sections of the Australian Labor Party. This was more of a problem in the state of Victoria than in the state of New South Wales. In 1955, some members split from the ALP and formed the Democratic Labor Party (DLP). One effect of this was that the ALP did not win another federal election until 1972. Another effect was that the two great archdioceses of Sydney and Melbourne were also, in a sense, “split” along political lines. The Cardinal Archbishop of Sydney and Sydney Catholics in general continued to support the ALP. In Victoria, however, Archbishop Daniel Mannix, until his death in 1963, staunchly supported the DLP, as did many Victorian Catholics and Catholics in the mineral-rich state of Queensland. Just about every Victorian Catholic knows which side their grandparents or great-grandparents took in “the Split”. Cardinal Pell came from a DLP-supporting family.

I've started reading Mike Willesee's "A Sceptic's Search for Meaning". He was an Australian journalist who became atheist but during the last few years of his life returned to the Catholic Church, and the book tells his story.

But he was also affected by the "Split", as follows, and it played a part in his becoming atheist as he was persecuted by Catholic priests and others.

"After a couple of years on this new road of slow withdrawal, events outside my control would force me onto a faster track away from God. It was the mid-1950's: the McCarthy era, and a divisive time in the liberty and mindset of Australians. 'Reds' were 'under the bed' and to call somebody a communist could all but destroy their career.

My father was a working-class man who'd realised his dream and been elected as a Labor senator for Western Australia. He was also loyal to the Catholic Church. Unsurprisingly, the Church was anti-communist, but it perceived the Labor Party to be tolerant of communism. My father was caught in the middle.

When the Labor Party - the party of unions and workers - split over the fear of of communist infiltration, many Catholics left Labor to start the staunchly anti-communist Democratic Labor Party (DLP). It was the best thing that ever happened to the governing Liberal Party. Suddenly, the opposition party had almost no Catholics left in federal parliament because they'd all defected to the DLP. It gifted power to the conservatives for the better part of two decades.

My dad tried to stay true to the Labor Party and to the church, but something had to give. The Church turned on him. One day at mass, his character and his politics were attacked from the pulpit by different priests who branded him a communist. Mum and Dad walked out of the Church literally and figuratively. They vowed never to return and would remain in exile until their final days. And with their withdrawal from weekly mass came mine.

But that wasn't the end of this bitter plague on my family. It then spread to the school. My headmaster and his sidekick tired to humilate me contantly. ... One such day, while I was out in the corridor, the headmaster, Brother Murphy, cam by.

"You're out of the class again, Willesee. You're a troublemaker."

Bang! He floored me with a right hook. I was tempted to get up and fight back. I was 15 and just getting big enough to contemplate such a course, but I could see some little kids peering out the window at us. I don't think I even told my parents."

My father was a staunch unionist and usually voted Labor. I remember him saying to me that McCarthy was an absolute disgrace in American history.

Anyway that was the "Split" and Cardinal Peel would have been caught up in it somehow as he was active during those years.

But I can understand why Mike Willesee became cynical about the Catholic Church and by extension God. He also spent time in a Catholic School where some pedophile Brothers were in charge and that didn't escape his notice.

He had his reasons.

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Michie

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