George Pell was, by temperament and personality, about the worst possible choice to be made a bishop, then an archbishop, and ultimately a cardinal - one of the inner circle of the church entrusted with central church administration and the selection of new popes. He was the wrong man for the times - if ever there was a time for a person of his abrasive, absolutist and authoritarian style. By contrast, intimates describe his charm, his wit and his loyalty, and some seem to think him a saint for our times, unflinching in the face of evil and personal injustice.
But within the wider church his consuming problem was an obvious lack of empathy for ordinary Catholics, not least those who had suffered from institutional physical, mental, emotional and sexual abuses by the privileged castes of the church. The modern church bears serious scars from his "leadership"; it is now diminished in almost every way. That cannot be shrouded by the funeral processions of the great and good, the rich and powerful and others who have proclaimed him as a modern martyr.
