What the cat dragged in

 George Pell repenteth, at eleventh-hour

The call for sainthood for the late Cardinal George Pell should not be underestimated, or dismissed as premature.

True, some critics, including myself, did deride Pell during his life for some distinctly un-Christian attributes, including: using blackmail and backstabbing to advance his clerical career, lying under oath (repeatedly) to a Royal Commission (1), and, as a closeted gay man, being a hypocritical homophobe.  There is also the matter of his expensive tastes, including flying first-class etc, but despite the “camel through the eye of a needle” Biblical injunction here, I’ve always been wary of protesting too much on this front, aka being a plain jealous bitch.  

Anyhow, and famously, it’s never too late to repent.  And very late repentance – as long as it is accompanied by bucket-loads of humility – appears to hit the sweet-spot for martyrdom, itself seemingly a sure-fire short-cut for sainthood.

At this point, I’m sure that cynics are scoffing at the very possibility of Pell’s late-life humility and repentance – despite the fact of this staring them in the face, albeit somewhat buried in the detail of the news around Pell’s death. 

First, to place things in context:  the Catholic Church is the modern world’s most successful real-estate conglomerate.  Yet in recent weeks, by all accounts, Pell was living in shared digs just outside the Vatican.  That is, not even in the worst apartment in the worst street in the Vatican!  For a (non-Indigenous) Australian – the modern world’s, if not all of history’s, most opiate-of-the-masses real-estate addicts – to shun, as too opulent, even a 3.5m x 3m studio with St Peter’s glimpses is, I think, humility beyond all precedent.  That’s “camping out” – and proud – for you, Paul Keating!

Unkind souls may interject at this stage, while granting that the Catholic Church is generally able to comfortably accommodate its Cardinals within the Vatican, that his move into shared digs outside the walls, apparently only a few weeks ago, may not have been of his own making – quite possibly because of his bloviating against his boss, the Pope, as “Demos” (2).  Possibly so, but even assuming this – and here comes my trump card – Pell turned the other cheek, as it were.  That is, weeks ago and quite possibly for the first time in his life, Pell did not play the wronged (or haughty) princess-bitch by directly or pseudonymously denouncing or sabotaging those behind his real-estate downward-mobility.  Instead, he just took it on the chin, if he didn’t actually choose it.

As a fellow Australian renter, and so real-estate loser, I feel that Pell should be saluted for his immensely modest forbearance here.  Further – although I hope that here I am not getting too far ahead of myself – when the day of his canonization duly arrives, I propose that Saint George Pell be declared the official patron saint of renters (a position which, according to Google, appears to be currently vacant, or at least – as with the usual management of paedophile priests – one of a vague, dubiously-shared responsibility).

Finally, a couple of miracles will of course be required before George Pell can be canonized.  Luckily for his soul, and the rest of the world, I – being such an organised gay man – have war-gamed this already.  I have today started saying my prayers to him, beseeching that I be delivered frometh and forthwith the deep underclass of long-term Australian private renters, and passeth unto that graceful state of a real-estate owner in Australia.  Yes, I know that this will take a miracle – but that’s the point. 

If anyone else is in the same boat, and one day hits the jackpot here (only after also saying prayers to George Pell, of course – we don’t want any cheaters!), please send me a line, and I’ll then contact the Vatican directly with some irrefutable evidence of the requisite two miracles: title-deeds, aka the universal language of the Catholic Church.

(1)  I note that the mainstream media was very shy of pointing out Pell’s lying under oath – perjury – during his lifetime, but it was copiously mentioned in many reports of his death.  Surely it would have been possible, and more tasteful, to have hammered this out – while staying within the legal bounds – while Pell was still alive?   There’s definitely a defamation-law article, if not PhD thesis, on this point. 

(2)   Pell’s pseudonym as "Demos" was always a fig-leaf, as a Google search of {Pell and “explicitly heretical”} reveals – note also the mouthful (and drama-queen) adjective "explicitly" here, itself quite a give-away, but this was prissy Pell before his redemption.