CARDINAL George Pell, who died in Rome last week (News, 13 January), will be buried in the crypt of St Mary’s RC Cathedral, Sydney, on 2 February; his funeral was held in the Vatican last Saturday. Cardinal Pell was Archbishop of Sydney archdiocese from 2001 to 2014, immediately after five years as Archbishop of Melbourne.

Delivering the homily at the funeral, the Dean of the College of Cardinals, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, described the Cardinal as “a strong-willed and decisive protagonist” with “a strong temperament that, at times, could appear harsh”.

Pope Francis, who presided over the final rite of commendation, had praised Cardinal Pell for keeping his faith “with perseverance even in the hour of trial”: a reference to the Cardinal’s imprisonment after being convicted on charges of child sexual abuse. His conviction was quashed by the Australian High Court in 2020.

The Sydney memorial mass and burial will not be funded by the state, although state funerals are relatively common in Australia. In Victoria alone, there were 11 state-funded funerals last year for public figures, ranging from sportspeople and entertainers to politicians. The Premiers of both New South Wales and Victoria, both Roman Catholics, have ruled out a state funeral.

The Victorian Premier, Dan Andrews, said that a state funeral “would be a deeply, deeply distressing thing for every victim-survivor of Catholic Church child sexual abuse”. He said: “I couldn’t think of anything that would be more distressing for victim-survivors than that.”

In a statement on Cardinal Pell in the archdiocese of Brisbane’s newspaper The Catholic Leader, the RC Archbishop, Dr Mark Coleridge, has written that Cardinal Pell was “always a polarising figure, stirring strongly contrasting reactions”. He continued: “He had both passionate friends and passionate foes. In part this was because his deepest instincts were those of a politician who thrived on opposition and conflict. . . There wasn’t much middle ground for George Pell, not too many shades of grey.”

Dr Coleridge said that the Cardinal had once told him how struck he was by the words on the Roman tomb of Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, “Vehementer amavit Ecclesiam” (Vehemently he loved the Church). “George said, however, that he’d prefer on his own tomb, ‘Vehementer amavit Dominum et Ecclesiam’ [Vehemently he loved the Lord and the Church].”