Cardinal George Pell
Cardinal George Pell died at age 81 on Tuesday. Pell was a controversial figure in the Catholic Church having been under a cloud of abuse allegations that were ultimately overturned.
Pell was a financial adviser to Pope Francis and worked to reform the Holy’s See’s finances.
Sky News Australia’s Andrew Bolt alleges Pell was on a “media hate list” and the media was against him because he was conservative. “Because he tried to make priests follow the teachings of the church, rather than a left-wing gospel.”
Bolt suggests ABC journalist Louise Milligan “made a motser (large amount of money)” writing books “falsely spewing he was a pedophile”.
A Catholic journalist has now claimed that Pell was the author an anonymous memo sent to cardinals regarding the next papal election that was highly critical of Pope Francis.
A Catholic journalist from Italy revealed Wednesday that Cardinal George Pell, who died on Jan. 10, had been the author of a controversial memo about the next papal election.
The anonymous memo was circulated among cardinals during Lent last year and made public by Sandro Magister on March 15, 2022.
Magister, a longtime Vatican journalist, revealed the identity of the document’s author on Jan. 11, the day after Pell’s death from a cardiac arrest at the age of 81.
In an article about the Australian cardinal’s “last writings,” Magister wrote on his blog “Settimo Cielo” that “Pell was the author of that memorandum, signed ‘Demos,’ which was very critical of the pontificate of Francis.”
The funeral Mass of the Australian cardinal will be held in St. Peter’s Basilica on Jan. 14. Pope Francis will preside over the rites of final commendation and farewell, as he does for all cardinals who die in Rome.
Catholic News continues:
The memo on a future conclave described Pope Francis’ pontificate as a “disaster” and listed ways the author thought the pope had caused confusion on important issues in the Church.
“The Vatican’s political prestige is now at a low ebb,” the memorandum said.
The critical tone of the memo is matched by a more recent writing by Pell, published posthumously by the British magazine The Spectator.
The article, which calls Pope Francis’ three-year-long Synod on Synodality a “toxic nightmare,” was published on Jan. 11.
An associate editor of the magazine, Damian Thompson, described the article as Pell’s “last public statement,” though he did not know he was about to die when writing it and “was prepared to face the fury of Pope Francis and the [synod] organisers when it was published.”