Catholic bishops have the responsibility to be “governors and sometimes judges, as well as teachers and sacramental celebrants, and are not just wall flowers or rubber stamps”.

These typically punchy and memorable words were written by Cardinal George Pell, in an article in The Spectator magazine that appeared with characteristic panache shortly after his sudden and Church-shaking death on January 10, 2023. It was clear from the article and from his many conversations in Rome that the Cardinal had no idea of his impending death.

It is hard to imagine how anyone could survive his tireless pursuit of the financial corruption in the recesses of the Vatican, or his largely silent endurance of one of the most disfigured criminal cases in Australian history – his penal solitude of 405 days, along with tirades of blind hatred and cheap caricature thrown at him. But survive he did – and his return to Rome seemed to auger in a new era of quietly reflective but vigorous Church life.

What has been overshadowed in the last devastating and sensation-filled years – along with his many titles – has been the Cardinal’s highly original and lifelong commitment and contribution to education.

The Cardinal had leadership and interest in educating – in its broadest and most diverse forms and moments. As his successor in Sydney, Archbishop Anthony Fisher, would say in this year’s memorial homily:

"In sporting parlance, those rare players who master every position on the field are called ‘unicorns’. Cardinal Pell was such a unicorn in the arena of faith and morals. He had the imagination, focus and energy to attend to all the goods of human flourishing, more or less all the time."

His energy, attention and leadership to flourishing in education and formation was indeed remarkable.

He wrote, spoke and pioneered the getting of knowledge as wisdom in so many areas – from the episcopal to the public, from the education of teachers, to the promotion of liberal arts, to his pivotal role as founding president of the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family, to support of parents and grandparents and reform of seminary education.

The Cardinal also spurred on the social and cultural formation of students in associations at Catholic universities and in his publications, aimed to speak directly to young lay people about the essentials of natural law, the implications of history, and the influence of cultural trends and ideas on the interaction and balance between faith and reason.

He would write: “Knowledge itself is not enough for faith or for living a good life, but it is one essential constituent, if an educated person is to continue as a believer.”

In 1991, three years into the founding of the Thomas More Centre with its expanding annual summer schools and talks, the Cardinal became the TMC’s leading patron and star speaker.

It was during his lively and sometimes provocative engagement with and respect for the many TMC people – young and not-so-young – that the Cardinal was able to explore their curiosity and enthusiasms, as well as their deficits after contemporary education – whether in the Catholic system or in public life.

He indicates in his 1996 book, Issues in Faith and Morals, how important the place of the TMC programs was in assisting his conversational approach to “marrying contemporary Australian concerns” with a mature understanding of Catholic teaching.

“The Thomas More Centre (and Mary Helen Woods, then TMC organiser) distributed nine of these chapters as individual broadsheets, obtaining valuable feedback on sales of between 10,000 and 50,000 copies per sheet. These sales encouraged me to print this collection.”

During the 1990s, the TMC summer schools had grown to include Sunday night lectures, winter schools, and other events. It included a number of other leading laypeople, priests, and bishops in teaching faculty almost always alongside the then Bishop Pell – these included: Professor John Finnis; Drs Thomas Hilgers, Peter McCullagh, Lyn and John Billings; Senator Brian Harradine; Bishops William Brennan, Joe Grech and Kevin Manning; Cardinal Scola of Venice; future eminent professors, Nicholas Tonti-Filippini, Hayden Ramsay and Tracey Rowland; Archbishop Eric D’Arcy; Frs Campion Murray OFM, Tom Daly SJ, Paul Duffy SJ, Francis Harman, and many others.

In the years between 1991 and 2001, the Cardinal became the pivotal point of many of the TMC’s events and ventures.

Just before he left to become Archbishop of Sydney in 2001 and later Cardinal, George Pell as had become customary, led an open forum at Melbourne University with over 140 younger people who were part of the TMC summer school in 2000. It was his favourite style of stirring up ideas and individuality – his “conversazione” style – in which young and old, tradie and university student, were thrown together in conversation with him about life and faith.

He urged the young people “to test everything” (later a title of his published homilies) and he challenged them to make a difference – even if in only one area that challenges the secular nostrums with their own commitment to truth, goodness, and love.

He would repeat these words in a later letter to youth:

"Consider carefully the evidence for good and evil, for happiness and misery in the society that surrounds you… To those who have accepted Christ and have accepted His cross, I ask you to join the struggle against evil, for service against selfishness, for faith and hope against despair. Search out those of like mind and heart. Work together."

We at the Thomas More Centre honour and remember the Cardinal for his valiant and open-hearted encouragement of this “working” together.

We hope and pray that his prayers will intercede for the success of this work. The witness of his Prison Diaries will perhaps be the Cardinal’s most lasting and powerful lesson of all.

Anna Krohn OAM
Executive Director
Thomas More Centre