Cardinal Pell's 'anonymous' memo called Pope Francis's papacy a 'catastrophe'

Cardinal George Pell, who passed away this week at the age of 81, had once written an anonymous memo in which he criticised Pope Francis, calling his leadership a "catastrophe", the journalist who released it said. Notably, the Australian cardinal was one of Pope Francis's top aides before he had to step down to face child sex abuse charges.

"Commentators of every school, if for different reasons ... agree that this pontificate is a disaster in many or most respects; a catastrophe," the memo begins.

The Vatican blog site had carried the memo under a pseudonym last year in which the author talked about matters he saw as failures of the current Pope. The author also listed a list of priorities that should be kept in mind while choosing the next Pope.

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"The first tasks of the new pope will be to restore normality, restore doctrinal clarity in faith and morals, restore a proper respect for the law and ensure that the first criterion for the nomination of bishops is acceptance of the apostolic tradition," the memo reads.

Also Read |Cardinal Pell, Australia's highest ranking Catholic cleric, dies aged 81 in Rome

The memo goes on to say that Pope Francis' decisions and policies were often "politically correct".

"Decisions and policies are often 'politically correct', but there have been grave failures to support human rights in Venezuela, Hong Kong, mainland China, and now in the Russian invasion," it adds.

The Italian journalist who originally published the memo, Sandro Magister, told Reuters that Cardinal Pell wanted him to publish it. Sandro has a long record of leaking authentic Vatican documents and made the revelations in his religious affairs blog "Settimo Cielo".

"He wanted me to publish it," Magister told Reuters on Thursday.

Father Joseph Hamilton, Cardinal Pell's personal secretary, and a spokesman for the Vatican declined to comment on the latest revelation.

Pope Francis is set to deliver a final send-off at a funeral mass for Cardinal Pell on Saturday.

Pell was in jail for 13 months on child sexual abuse charges and his case rocked the Roman Catholic Church worldwide. He was a former archbishop of Melbourne and Sydney and served as economy minister at the Vatican from 2014 until 2017 when he took a leave of absence to return to Australia to face the abuse charges.

A jury in 2018 found he had abused two choir boys while he was the Archbishop of Melbourne in the 1990s, a verdict which was quashed in 2020 by an Australian appeals court.

Pell often attended the pontiff's Masses and Francis even praised him publicly after his return. Francis's morning Mass on the day of Pell's acquittal was for all those who suffer from unjust sentences, which he compared to the persecution of Jesus.

(With inputs from agencies)

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