On December the 18th, 2019, in his prison journal, Cardinal George Pell wrote “Our suffering is God’s pruning …… no pruning means little fruit.”
6 days later on Xmas Eve, the Cardinal went on to a quote about Xmas by Saint Edith Stein (pictured above), which had been sent to him from Ravensburg, Germany:
“In front of the crib you are connected to all those who are scattered all over the world and beyond. That’s a comforting secret.”
Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Stein’s saintly name) was a nurse, teacher and philosopher, who died in the gas chambers at Auschwitz in 1942:
Some things like people, childhood and babies do not thrive with pruning.
Perhaps Hitler’s “final solution”, a.k.a. the Holocaust, is proof of that
Whatever human pruning may or may not be necessary is best left to God.
All life is sacred.
Geoff Fox, December 18, 2025, Footscray, Australia
On this date six years ago, Cardinal Pell’s entry in his prison journal was and is for me a wonderful account of how his church was his very broad extended family metaphorically speaking.
The entry started with reporting receiving a copy of the above artwork, Filippo Lippi’s Madonna and Child from “Pauline, a good friend and a Scot from London …..” (The painting shows Mary as a doting mum to Jesus who is held up by two angels.)
The penultimate thought of the Cardinal’s entry that day is this lament:
“Holy Mother Church in Australia and elsewhere has formidable strengths ……. even in a deeply polarised society. But a fundamental decline has to be acknowledged. The challenge is to slow this down and reverse the trend.”
How very true!
Omnia omnibus,
Geoff Fox, December 17, 2025, Melbourne, Australia
Six years ago today on December 3rd 2019, Cardinal Pell described a well publicised visit to him the previous day by former Prime Minister Tony Abbott as a “….. public gesture ….. worth much more with the general population than learned articles.”
Today I showed the above picture of Mr Abbott, talking with US president Barak Obama, to my traditionally educated friend Gaye.
She said that body language indicated that Obama did not like what he was being told and that the former Australian Prime Minister was clearly not a Yes-Man.
On Decmber the first six years ago in his prison journal Cardinal Pell wrote of (the modern world’s) “……. mythology of progress, a mirage of inevitable and universal progress …….” as being “……. exploded again in the crimes of the twentieth century.”
What is truly good is not transitory. It lasts.
Today is the feast day of Saint Eligius, whose honesty reminds me of what I sense reading the Cardinal’s prison journal.
St Eligius is pictured above, in a Juan de Valdés Leal painting of the mid 1650’s, kneeling with a sitting Saint Anthony of Padua before the Virgin Mary.
Six years ago today, on the Feast Day of St Edmund the Martyr, Cardinal Pell wrote in his prison journal:
“As Christianity declines in Australia, it is almost inevitable that this gap will be filled by the diabolical. …….. God of love, as you exist, please lead us to the truth.”
Geoff Fox, November 20, 2025, on the train home from a trip to St Marks anglo-catholic Abbey just outside Camperdown, Victoria
(Above is an image of St Martha and another woman by Ciro Ferri (1633–1689) with words added by me.)
“I dreamed I saw St. Augustine Alive with fiery breath And I dreamed I was amongst the ones That put him out to death” – Bob Dylan, October 17, 1967
Yesterday, on the front page of The Australian, a report by Paola Totaro (an Italian-Australian journalist based in London) headlined: “Money-laundering smoking gun could bring Vatican to its knees.” had a photo of Carinal George Pell but IMHO this report was deficient in not mentioning the monstrous injustice committed against Cardinal George Pell by a justice system, which I know (from personal experience going back to 2016) has been twisted and perverted by one or more people in the Australian Labor Party.
The Australian newspaper is consistently one of my first choices in looking for the truth. I hope this broadsheet journal gives significant space on the front page or opinion page ASAP to at least one good Catholic voice to expand upon the account given yesterday of George Pell’s anti money-laundering work, which was commissioned very early in his twelve year papacy by Pope Francis.
If the money laundering which Pell opposed caused more damage than necessary because The Cardinal was removed from his work by the monstrous injustice of false imprisonment, then those responsible for that false imprisonment should be held acccountable legally and financially.
Daniel Michael Andrews and Shane Andrew Patton and your successors, who have failed to right the wrong, this means you.
Six years ago today, Cardinal George Pell wrote in his Prison Journal these beautiful words about how important it is for believers not to lose their faith in what can be an overwhelmingly difficult world :
“Augustine tells us we are all heading toward the contemplation of God in heaven “still as pilgrims not yet at rest; still on the road, not yet home; still aiming at it, not yet attaining it”. “
We should not lament that we do not see the Lord in the flesh, because we see him in the least of those around us. Martha did well because she “received him (Christ) just as pilgrims are received. But it was the servant receiving her Lord, the sick woman receiving her Saviour, the creature receiving her Creator.” “
God Bless Cardinal George Pell and Pope Francis in heaven.
And all those who honour these two great men and their memory and continue fighting the wrong doing known to many of us wherever it may be, as did Cardinal George Pell and Pope Francis.
Geoff Fox, July 29, 2025, Melbourne, Australia
Words added by me to a painting by Antonio da Correggio (1489–1534) of Saints Peter, Martha, Mary Magdalen, and Leonard.
THE CRUCIFIED CARDINAL 