It set a pattern. He spoke his mind against what he saw as barriers to Christ’s kingdom. And he never stopped.

Most of us make concessions to our enemies. It is human nature’s greatest failing, to want to be part of the in-group.

SAINTHOOD

Overcoming this is the surest way to sainthood. In Pell’s case, to martyrdom.

Later this month, Tess Livingstone’s second (and complete) biography of Cardinal Pell will be launched at Campion College by John Howard and will have contributions from Tony Abbott and Archbishop Anthony Fisher.

(Two of these three are actively involved in praying for my daughter’s full recovery from multiple serious health issues and her living hell in Townsville Hospital, for which we are truly grateful. I firmly believe that the subject of the book is up there, interceding too.)

I haven’t yet read Tess’s new book, titled George Cardinal Pell: Pax Invictis, A Biography. But this eye-opening interview, a mini masterpiece, is a useful starting point – and it reveals much of the Cardinal’s true greatness.

It also diminishes massively the credibility of Pell’s many accusers and enemies, in both Rome and Melbourne, the two cities most associated with get-Pellism.

The interview reveals a giant life, sublimely lived. Pilgrims to Pell’s final resting place in the crypt under St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney tend now to pray through him, rather than for him.

Tony Abbott called Pell Australia’s white martyr. A typically crisp summary of his life and legacy.

George’s early opponents included seminarians who objected to his demands, as rector, that they attend daily Mass. Wow.

That these were the future priests of the Catholic Church says much of we need to know about the post-conciliar mindset.

Pell’s early insistence on telling the message of Christ as it was, rather than fabricating alternate, more comfortable, contemporary versions of the message, set him up for a lifetime of pain at a time when his Church was sending very mixed signals to the faithful. A tough gig was guaranteed.

The juicy bits of the book and interview aren’t really about the patently false sex abuse allegations, trials, appeals and ultimate exoneration.

That familiar story has been told well already, by Gerard Henderson, Keith Windschuttle, Frank Brennan – and me (many times over).

No, the juicy bits here are about Vatican corruption.

About Pell’s apartment at the Vatican, shortly after his appointment to look into Vatican finances, was broken into. That his phones were bugged. That he did a bug sweep of his digs at Domus Australia (where I have stayed) and found it to have, indeed, been bugged.

That Pell even suspected such skullduggery in the Eternal City, the See of Peter, reveals his realism, pragmatism and groundedness.

ENEMIES

He thought that his Vatican enemies had more than a little to do with his trials over false accusations in Melbourne. Never proven, but credibly suspected.

And Pell never had any doubt that he had Vatican enemies and that they had deep ties with the State of Victoria. All that we know about Daniel Andrews and VicPol suggest that Pell was onto something.

We await Shane Patton’s memoirs on that one. My guess is that we will never know.

Still, despite it all, George Pell never lost the faith.

We already know about Pell’s incarceration. Four hundred days in prison, mostly in solitary confinement. For his own protection, they said. Tommy Robinson, anyone?

Ironically, some of George’s greatest friends and supporters were his fellow prisoners. Mostly, they cheered enthusiastically when he was finally released.

Pell’s Prison Diaries are discussed. They go to his grounded spirituality, his essentially Aussie, pragmatic Catholicism. He was, after all, brought up by a non-practising Anglican publican. (And a Catholic mother.)

The Diaries are truly remarkable. The man simply didn’t ever give up on his ministry. Ever.

His unerring faith was, on its face, ridiculous. The thousands of letters he received were all answered. Many were from other prisoners, all over the place, seeking his comforting solace.

This was simply a new and unexpected opportunity for further ministry. For a man nearly eighty years of age, his reputation shredded, his health hanging by a thread, he still found the energy to seek souls and enrich lives on earth.

The Diaries have been described as a spiritual classic by Joseph Fessio of Ignatius Press.

The famous Demos memo was discussed in the interview.

A text is being attributed to the late Pell that summarises deep concerns he and many others in Rome have had about the current crisis in the Church and the direction of this pontificate.

DEMOS

Here is the gist: “Last March during Lent, the veteran Italian Vaticanist Sandro Magister published the text and described it as a “memorandum” circulated to cardinal electors and pseudonymously written under the name “Demos,” the Greek name for people.

“Magister wrote at the time that it was written by someone who ‘shows himself a thorough master of the subject’ and it ‘cannot be ruled out that he himself is a cardinal’.”

Last week, Magister revealed to the Associated Press that Cardinal Pell was the author. He also told the Register on January 13 that “the text was handed over to me personally by Cardinal Pell” who was “very pleased that I published it, provided I did not mention the name of the author.

“And he wrote it all,” Magister said, “from the first words to the last.”

This was a (then) anonymous corker of a critique of the Pope Francis Church. Probably written with other Cardinals, with Pell’s orchestration. If so, this makes it even more powerful, and disturbing.

Pell’s last concerns were several.

The persecution by the Vatican of traditionalist Catholics. The bullshit of synodality. The Vatican silence in the face of obvious high-level apostasy, like that from the European Church’s sickening rolling over in the face of radical homosexualists. He named names.

Pell recognised when princes of the Church were talking spiritual shite. (If you think I am imputing un-apostolic language to the late Cardinal, I was present once at Campion College when he said, “pardon the French, this is shit!”)

He mentioned Pachamama, Pope Francis’s clearest sign of his own deep and dangerous theological confusion – here I am being polite, it imperils souls – that has recently been mentioned by Mel Gibon on Joe Rogan.