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VATICAN CITY – The final version of the relatio from the Exraordinary Synod on the Family will get a vote on Saturday and probably not released until Sunday at the earliest, but Cardinal George Pell warns that those expecting support for a “secular agenda” had better be prepared for disappointment. Catholic News Service interviewed Pell, who serves in the Vatican as prefect for the Secretariat for the Economy, at the end of the circoli minori process. Pell said the draft relatio was “tendentious, skewed,” and broadly opposed on the synod floor when discussed: Cardinal George Pell said working-group reports...

AUSTRALIA'S most senior Catholic cleric, Cardinal George Pell, has tentatively agreed to a meeting with gay marriage campaigners. That is, if they first declare that not all opposition to same-sex marriage is homophobic and discriminatory. As both sides of the debate continue their public campaigns, Cardinal Pell has written a letter in response to a request from gay marriage campaigners for a formal meeting to discuss the issues polarising the community. The official gay marriage campaign, Australian Marriage Equality, wrote to the Archbishop of Sydney on December 20 to discuss their concerns about a campaign by the Australian Catholic Church...

SEOUL, South Korea, January 24, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Catholic Archdiocese of Seoul has awarded its first annual Mysterium Fidei (Mystery of Faith) Grand Prix award for outstanding pro-life work to George Cardinal Pell, the archbishop of Sydney, Australia. In his address at the award ceremony January 17, the Cardinal gave a comprehensive examination of the issues surrounding abortion, euthanasia, artificial procreation and the destruction of the traditional family. Cardinal Pell urged the pro-life movement "to draw society into deeper reflection about the mystery, wonder and value of human life," and reject the new utilitarian morality. The award included...

VATICAN, January 3, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Two high-ranking Catholic clergymen ushered in the New Year by separately denouncing the currently most fashionable doomsday theory-the theory of man-driven global-warming-and radical environmentalism, as both unscientific and disturbingly quasi-religious. Cardinal George Pell, the notoriously outspoken Australian clergy-man, and Bishop Crepaldi, the Vatican secretary of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, published their comments in The Catholic World Report (CWR), and Fides news agency, respectively. In a lengthy interview with CWR, Pell, while admitting that there is clear evidence that man-made pollutants can have negative effects on the environment, cautioned against the...

A BITTER rift over climate change has developed between a senior member of the Anglican Church and Sydney Catholic Archbishop George Pell. Canberra Bishop George Browning, the Anglican Church's global environmental chief said Cardinal Pell was out of step with his own church and made no sense on global warming. Bishop Browning also criticised the Federal Government for its "utter obsession" with growth and warned that climate change refugees would be a bigger problem than terrorists in a century of desperate struggle. At the national Anglican synod in Canberra yesterday, Bishop Browning attacked the cardinal for saying Jesus said nothing...

THE Catholic Church wants to discourage non-Catholic families from enrolling their children in its schools under a return to strict religious values.Church leaders headed by Cardinal George Pell yesterday issued an edict to all Catholic schools, demanding that students and their parents be more devout and outlining a plan to lure back thousands of poorer families who have left the system. The Church will not ban non-Catholic students from enrolment - it says it considered, but rejected, plans for a formal "downsizing to accommodate only those who are committed to the faith". But it wants to introduce a new four-...

THE NICKNAME in this office of this Thursday self-indulgence column is hick Mick, on the basis that it frequently traverses the fact that I am of rural background, (partly) Irish stock, and a Catholic. I am fiercely proud of all three characteristics, but sometimes wonder whether I can, should or do belong to the same set of poor banished children of Eve as George Cardinal Pell. George is threatening anathemas against Catholic school principals, and, most recently, Catholic politicians in an effort to force not only conformity with formal church teachings, but formal submissions of the Church's and his own...

Some Australian Muslim groups have reacted angrily to comments made by Australia's most senior Catholic cleric, Cardinal George Pell. The Archbishop of Sydney has backed the Pope's speech made in Germany last week, linking Islam's history with violence. The Pontiff has since apologised, saying he is deeply sorry about angering so many Muslims, and that the 14th Century passages that he referred to in no way reflect his views. Cardinal Pell says the pontiff did nothing wrong in making the speech, and says he does not rule out a link between Islam and violence. "I'm not sure, I would welcome...

By + Cardinal George Pell Archbishop of Sydney18/9/2006 It is a sign of hope that no organised violence has flared here in Australia, following Pope Benedict’s recent comments. No one compared the Pope to Hitler or Mussolini (as in Turkey) or called for his murder as Sheik Malin did in Somalia. No group like the League of Jihadists in Iraq promised “that the soldiers of Mohammed will come sooner or later to shake your throne and the foundations of your state”. However the violent reactions in many parts of the Islamic world justified one of Pope Benedict’s main fears. They...

Islam, violence go hand in hand: Pell 19th September 2006, 8:00 WST Australia’s most senior Catholic has launched a stinging attack on Muslims, saying their aggressive reaction to the Pope’s recent comments about Islam highlighted the link between their religion and violence. As the world braced for more Muslim anger over Pope Benedict’s remarks, Cardinal George Pell said “the violent reactions in many parts of the Islamic world” justified one of the Pope’s main fears. “They showed the link for many Islamists between religion and violence, their refusal to respond to criticism with rational arguments, but only with demonstrations, threats...

SYDNEY'S Catholic Archbishop has hit out at Muslims protesting over comments by the Pope, saying their reaction shows the link in Islam between religion and violence. Cardinal George Pell has also labelled the response of some Australian Muslim leaders to the issue as "unhelpful". A wave of protest has erupted among Muslims across the globe after comments by Pope Benedict XVI, in which he quoted an obscure medieval text that criticised some teachings of the Prophet Mohammed as "evil and inhuman". The Pope has since said he is "deeply sorry" for the outrage sparked by his remarks and stressed they...

Cardinal George Pell has declared yet again Islam is more warlike than Christianity, this time to a US Catholic newspaper. The Catholic Archbishop of Sydney told the National Catholic Reporter (NCR) Australia hadn't been affected much by Islamic threat following the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US, but this could change depending "on how many terrorist attacks" Muslim fundamentalists could "bring off successfully", Fairfax newspapers report. In the interview conducted in Rome with well-known NCR reporter John L Allen, Dr Pell said "the million-dollar question" was whether intolerance was a modern distortion of Islam or arose out of internal...

Mary, Help of Christians St Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney By + Cardinal George Pell Archbishop of Sydney 24 May 2005 Welcome to St. Mary’s, the first Catholic Church in Australia and therefore the mother church of the entire continent.Governor Macquarie, not a Catholic but an enlightened man who transformed the colony of New South Wales, laid the foundation stone in 1821. It is good that senior students from all our Catholic secondary schools come together today for Mass as we pray for the protection of Mary Help of Christians.It reminds us that we belong to a larger community than our school...

By + Cardinal George Pell Archbishop of Sydney 4/2/2006 September 11 was a wake-up call for me personally. I recognised that I had to know more about Islam. In the aftermath of the attack one thing was perplexing. Many commentators and apparently the governments of the “Coalition of the Willing” were claiming that Islam was essentially peaceful, and that the terrorist attacks were an aberration. On the other hand one or two people I met, who had lived in Pakistan and suffered there, claimed to me that the Koran legitimised the killings of non-Muslims. Although I had possessed a copy...

The Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, has angered Australian Muslims with his description of their holy book as an incitement to violence. In a speech delivered to a group of Catholic business leaders at the Legatus summit in the United States, the Archbishop also took aim at what he claimed were hysterical and extreme claims about global warming. Dr Pell's central argument is that an understanding of Islam is vital for the future of western democracies. September 11, according to the Cardinal, was a wake-up call that prompted him to dust off a copy of the Koran. "I...

A GROUP of leading liberal Catholics has complained to the Vatican that Cardinal George Pell is teaching inaccurate and misleading doctrine. Spokesman Frank Purcell went further, accusing the cardinal of fostering an "Eichmann mentality" whereby people in the church did not think for themselves but simply obeyed orders. (Adolf Eichmann was the Nazi in charge of exterminating Jews in World War II.) The Catholics wrote in November to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith — formerly the Holy Inquisition, and a body on which Cardinal Pell served under the present Pope — but have had no reply. They...

Canberra, Sep. 22 (CWNews.com) - Cardinal George Pell of Sydney, Australia denounced liberal educational ideology during a speech at the National Press Club in Canberra. Cardinal Pell said that said that contemporary educational institutions have led to what Pope Benedict XVI called the "dictatorship of relativism." He attacked the trends in which "great works of literature and the study of history are dismissed as elitist," saying that the practical result of that approach is to "dismantle the sense of objective reality." If this approach becomes universal, the cardinal warned, the word "conscience" could be stripped of its meaning, and become...

A leader of Australia's Roman Catholic church has barred a group of liberal followers from using a church venue to hold a conference at which a gay rights activist was to speak. Cardinal George Pell, who has refused to give communion to gays and once called homosexuality "a greater health hazard than smoking," said it would be unsuitable for the liberal Australian Reforming Catholics group to meet on church property. It was not immediately clear what the gay activist planned to speak about. Pell also forbade liberal Bishop Pat Power from celebrating Mass at the event, which has been moved...

In a departure from tradition, last night's St Mary's Cathedral, Sydney celebration of Dr George Pell's elevation to the Sacred College of Cardinals started with evening prayer instead of mass. The Australian reports that this allowed representatives of Protestant faiths, including Anglican Archbishop of Sydney Peter Jensen and Rev Alistair Christie from the NSW Uniting Church to join the occasion. After the prayer, Cardinal Pell - described by The Australian as "resplendent in scarlet robes and his three-peaked cardinal's cap" - told the packed cathedral of his intention to strengthen ecumenical relations. "Friendship, common prayer, dialogue (and) co-operation between different...