On one side is Hyde Park. On the other, the neo-Gothic three-nave St. Mary’s Cathedral, European in style but Sydney sandstone. The road is closed. Dozens of police guard the four lanes and the bike lane. Minutes before the start of the funeral of Cardinal George Pell, a hundred demonstrators gather to protest: “He said that smoking was worse for your health than being homosexual”, commented one of the organizers of the march.
Pell, who died in Rome on January 10, was a mainstay of Australia’s conservative “culture war.” Against abortion, against homosexuality and conservative, the cardinal ended up 406 days in prison for covering up cases of pedophilia in the diocese of Ballarat, in Victoria. The Supreme Court exonerated him because the investigation did not meet the required standards, which for his political supporters and the Church was, without being it, a letter of innocence.
“He was convicted of crimes he did not commit,” Archbishop of Sydney Anthony Fisher said in his homily. “There are those who continue to demonize him, but others remember his legacy.” The solemn pontifical mass was officiated by the archbishop in the presence of Peter Dutton, Liberal leader in opposition, and former Conservative Prime Ministers Tony Abbott and John Howard. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese sent a representative.
In 1999, Pell intervened on Howard’s behalf by calling for a vote for the Liberal Party, and the Liberal Party rewarded him with grants to universities and Catholic institutions. Abbott, who participated in the mass, defined him as a “Christian warrior” who wanted “this country and Western civilization to triumph”, mocking those who came to protest: “They shout ‘go to hell’, now they really believe in the other life. It is perhaps Pell’s first miracle.”
In Hyde Park, in front of the press, there was everything. Representatives of the 1978 Mardi Gras, the first in Sydney, which was held as an echo of the events at Stonewall in New York; In the square in front of Santa Maria, Catholics from different congregations, from Croatians with “Bog i Hravsta” T-shirts (“God and Croatia”, in honor of Ante Star?evi?, the political father of Croatian nationalism) to Filipinos or Anglo-Saxons.
When mass began at eleven o’clock, in Hyde Park they shouted: “George Pell, go to hell!; George Pell, go to hell! ”, (“George Pell, go to hell!”). An LGTBQ activist approached the police cordon and broke the silence with a whistle. He ended up being detained in a NSW Police Force van.
Seven minutes after the start of the ceremony, on the steps of Santa María, the representatives of the Australian dioceses entered the temple. The last of them, Archbishop Fisher, who greeted the public who followed the ceremony from the street on two giant screens. The procession entered the church lulled by the hymn of Charles Wesley, an 18th-century English Methodist leader.
Outside, the demonstrators approached the couple of hundred believers who were following the mass on the giant screen. They raised the rosaries and one of them faced them and yelled at the police: “You are the Government, do your job!” Between the shouting and the rainbow flags, one of the believers told another: “Don’t let the demons distract you from what’s going on inside.”
Inside, prayers, psalms and gospel. Until the homily. “His days in prison were a spiritual retreat,” Fischer said. “Jesus was also in prison.” Tony Abbott also spoke. Natalia, born and raised as a Catholic, followed the act from the outside: “We know that the accusations were false. We have prayed for him… It was a farce of justice”.
“He paid for the sins of others,” said Pedro, a Cordovan who immigrated to Australia 10 years ago as a missionary. In his opinion, it was the fault of the Victoria Police. But as journalist Louise Milligan recalls, in 1996 Pell attended the funeral of pedophile Nazareno Fasciale six weeks before he was to be investigated for harassing four children, and he knew it, as the Royal Commission on Child Abuse found that he also he was on the case of the assaults on Gerald Ridscale, who is still serving a 36-year sentence for 70 cases.
The public inquiry showed that the Catholic Church was overrepresented in terms of sexual abuse and gathered only evidence that could be corroborated by another source. Pell was not tried for the complaints of two men who in 2016 said that the priest touched them in a swimming pool.
For News Corp, Rupert Murdoch’s conglomerate, nothing counted enough against Pell, and Ridscale alone was to blame for it all. In fact, some of his journalists attended the funeral.
The only cardinal to have been in Melbourne and Sydney worked the alliance with Murdoch all his life. Charismatic and affable, Pell fought progressive policies for years from the column that he sent from time to time by fax. “Who are you writing for? Is it a left-wing newspaper? –asks Natalia’s companion when the mass ends–. It is that you have to watch and you have to tell the war that is going on in Rome well ”, he adds.
Around 2:00 p.m., while Pell’s sarcophagus was leaving the temple towards the crypt, the family, ecclesiastical and political entourage heard how the protesters shouted again and with more emphasis, and played Highway to hell from the ACDC after the escape in C minor by Johann Sebastian Bach.
