ROME, Italy, December 16, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — An exonerated Australian cardinal stated today that he accepted his time in prison as “a gift and a grace.”
Cardinal George Pell, who was imprisoned on charges of child sexual abuse later struck down by Australia’s highest court, gave an online press conference today to answer questions about his new book. Prison Journal: Volume I, with an introduction by George Weigel, was published by Ignatius Press.
“God writes straight with crooked lines, and given that I was sentenced to jail, I do regard it as a gift and a grace,” Pell told reporters.
“I’d have to hasten to add that I still regret that it happened,” he continued.
“I wouldn’t have chosen it, but there I was and, please God, I did my Christian duty while I was in jail.”
In the hour-long press conference, the Australian cardinal said that “many, many good things” happened to him during his imprisonment. They included “the wonderful support” of his family and friends; the “decency and professionalism” of all the warders, some of whom were quite friendly; the letters he received, including from other prisoners; “intellectually stimulating” journal articles people sent him; and an excellent prison chaplain.
“I was impressed by the goodness of a lot of people,” Pell said.
The cardinal received good wishes even from his next-cell neighbor.
“The fellow who was in the cell next to me — he was a bit off his head, he’s a mass murderer. But on the morning that I was going for my appeal, he shouted out, wished me well,” the cardinal recalled.
“A very small thing, but it’s something for which I was very, very grateful.”
The press conference was introduced and moderated by the American author George Weigel, who said he had known the cardinal for 53 years. Weigel stated that although Pell’s book should never have been written, the fact that it was written was a “grace” and a “blessing.” Prison Journal will allow people who had never met the cardinal to meet the “full” George Pell instead of the “cartoon” Pell “perpetuated” by the Australian media.
“Even old friends will encounter depths of insight here that they might not have met before,” Weigel said.
“The book invites readers to meet the soul of a public man, which is a rare thing indeed, and all the more precious for its rarity,” he continued.
“Even more impressive is when we are allowed to meet a soul as it’s being purified and strengthened by suffering.”
Cardinal Pell revealed that he wrote his journal “partly as a historical record of a strange time.” More importantly, he thought his reflections might help people going through hard times. He also found it “good therapy”.
“As I said to somebody, I now understand why Solzhenitsyn wrote so much,” the cardinal said.
On December 9, NBC News ran a story about what it called “hate groups” that received Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans from the Small Business Administration to deal with the COVID lockdowns.
The list included such well-respected pro-family groups as American Family Association, American College of Pediatricians and the Ruth Institute.
SIGN and SHARE this joint petition from LifeSite and the Ruth Institute calling for an immediate retraction of NBC's December 9th story, smearing pro-family groups with defamatory and hateful rhetoric.
NBC relied on “research” from the notorious Southern Poverty Law Center, a left-wing group which uses distortions and innuendo to smear its opponents. SPLC considers groups opposed to abortion, same-sex marriage and transgenderism to be anti-LGBTQ and therefore, hate groups.
By the SPLC’s standard, hate groups would also include women’s athletic associations which oppose allowing “transgendered” men to participate in women’s competitions. Likewise, parents who object to men in cocktail dresses and tiaras interacting with children during Drag Queen Story Hour are equally hateful.
The SPLC's "hate group" label has incited at least one incident of literal, not metaphorical, violence. Floyd Lee Corkins, who stormed the Family Research Council in 2012, cited the SPLC’s “hate map” for how he chose his target. He shot the security guard. Conkin further stated that he intended to kill as many people as possible.
And, NBC has its own credibility problems on politics generally and on sexual issues specifically. Bias was rampant in coverage of the 2020 presidential campaign. Media Research Center found that for a two-month period, while coverage of Biden on network newscasts (including NBC) was 67% positive, reporting on Trump was 95% negative.
On the sexual front, NBC’s biases stand out as particularly odious. Ronan Farrow, formerly an NBC News investigative reporter, credibly claims that they ordered him to stop investigating the Harvey Weinstein story. NBC denies this, but their denial is flimsy.
And, in its story on the “hate groups” receiving PPP loans, NBC neglected to mention that Planned Parenthood state and local affiliates received $80 million in SBA loans, and strip clubs qualified for millions more.
Apparently, NBC finds nothing hateful about killing unborn children, nothing degrading to women about pole dancing. With its story on “hate groups” getting COVID relief, NBC has firmly established itself as a tool of the Sexual Revolution.
Please SIGN and SHARE this urgent joint petition, demanding that NBC retract hate-filled smears of pro-family groups.
And, after signing and sharing, please take time to email NBC to politely express your feelings on this matter. Politely ask them to retract their story of December 9th labeling respected pro-family groups as so-called "hate groups."
NBC News Managing Editor: [email protected]
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
'Accused hate groups receive pandemic aid (nbcnews.com)'
Broadcast coverage of Trump 95% negative, according to new study - Washington Times
Strip-club stimulus reveals lingering uncertainties over U.S. small-business aid | Reuters
'Southern Poverty Law Center Linked to FRC Shooting in Chilling New Interrogation Video' - FRC
In Prison Journal, Pell wrote that he was aware of an obligation to forgive those who accused him. When asked by a reporter how people can “nourish” forgiveness, the cardinal indicated that prayer is key.
“First of all, you have to keep praying. Reading the Scriptures, reading your breviary, even going to Mass,” Pell said.
“The New Testament is always niggling away at us — much more than the Old Testament, reminding us of difficult challenges, like the challenge to forgive.”
The cardinal recalled from a marriage encounter meeting, long ago, that one couple talking about forgiveness between husband and wife said the most important thing was to “make an act of will to forgive and then, in many cases, the feelings follow behind.”
“I think you decide to forgive, and pretty well always the feelings will follow,” Pell declared.
“Every now and again, you may feel a surge of animosity, and I suppose you’ve just got to clamp down on it,” he added.
“But you can’t do that without faith, and I suspect you need to keep praying.”
When asked if there was anything he missed in prison life, Pell said at first that he had never thought about it, but then reminisced about his nightly cup of camomile tea and two rows of Cadbury chocolate. He mentioned having watched a lot of sports on television and at times feeling content and settled.
“My jail time doesn’t give me nightmares,” he assured reporters.
While he was in prison, Pell prayed for victims of pedophilia every day. Regarding the Church’s pastoral care of victims of clerical sexual abuse, Pell said that there had been “a renewed emphasis” on it since the Royal Commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse. The current compensation panel is “scarcely different” from the one the cardinal himself set up in the Melbourne response in the mid-1990s.
“There have got to be counseling services available and, of course, financial reparations,” Pell stated.
“It’s a solemn obligation. We’ve got to do our best. I think by and large we’re moving along in the right direction in Australia.”
He noted, however, that it was not sufficiently acknowledged in Australia that the Church had “broken the back” of the problem of clerical sexual abuse of children “by stopping the crimes substantially in the middle of the ’90s.” “Hardly any” of the cases examined by the recent Royal Commission were from the 21st century, and “most of them were from times earlier than the 1990s.”
Lisa Wheeler of Carmel Communications confirmed with LifeSiteNews, which has a reporter present at the event, that this was Cardinal Pell’s first press conference since he returned to Rome this autumn.