Kong described Pell as a pastor, father, and friend.
“He was very friendly and he always asked me how I was doing,” the priest said. “He always asked me about my opinion on certain issues and media and things.”
The Melbourne priest is studying Church communications at Rome’s University of the Holy Cross.
He said for the Australian priests in Rome, Pell was “a good pastor, a good shepherd, a spiritual father, or even a grandfather.”
Kong said the cardinal was always kind to the random people who would approach him on the street to say hello.
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“I witnessed that he was a man of strong faith in God, of course,” he said, adding that Pell had a “gentle and humorous manner” with people.
In May 2021, Pell led a eucharistic procession at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, known as the Angelicum.
Speaking to EWTN News, Pell said: “I’m very pleased to be here. I gather it’s a student initiative, led by students, a wonderful example of faith in practice.”
“I think it’s important after COVID to get back to a regular church routine of prayer and worship,” he continued. “I’m not sure in the long run that COVID will change too much, but it might have given another excuse for us to get a little bit slack, a little bit relaxed, in our approach to our prayer and worship, and we’ve got to battle against that.”
Cardinal George Pell leads a eucharistic procession in Rome on May 13, 2021. Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Pell also had a good relationship with journalists and media. He collaborated with EWTN on multiple occasions, including taped and live interviews the week of the death of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, just a couple of weeks before his own sudden passing from a cardiac arrest.
“What I knew about him was, I think, what many Catholics knew about him, which was really the high-profile case,” Colm Flynn, a journalist working with EWTN, told CNA.
From 2020 until this month, Flynn interviewed Pell about five times, for both TV and radio.
Flynn said he thought the cardinal would be reluctant to do media interviews after his return to Rome. But it only took a bit of time to build up the trust of Pell and his secretary.
“And then I was surprised when I first met him that there was a different side to Cardinal George Pell than the one that I had seen portrayed in the media,” Flynn said. “There was this gentle and kind side to him that you often didn’t see in other places or hear about. So I was lucky enough to kind of see that side of him over the past couple of years.”
“On top of that he was always quick to offer a word of support and encouragement to me and to the team at EWTN,” he said.
In March 2022, Pell celebrated Mass in memory of Mother Angelica, the founder of EWTN, at the Church of Santo Spirito in Sassia.
At the Mass, which marked the sixth anniversary of Mother Angelica’s death in 2016, Pell commented on the nun’s “feisty character.”
“Mother was a flesh-and-bone figure, energetic, pushy, aggressive for the Gospel. She was not well named as it will be difficult to think of anyone who was, in some ways, less angelical,” he said in his homily.
The same morning as the Mass, the Rome marathon had blocked people from crossing the main thoroughfare in front of St. Peter’s Basilica to arrive at the church.
“I had a little difficulty getting across the Via della Conciliazione here because of the marathon,” Pell commented. “And I had to employ an ounce of Mother Angelica’s direct approach to be able to get here for the Mass. So we thank God for that.”
Hannah Brockhaus is Catholic News Agency's senior Rome correspondent. She grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, and has a degree in English from Truman State University in Missouri.
Cardinal George Pell arrives at his Rome apartment, one block from the Vatican, on Sept. 30, 2020. Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Father Michael Kong at lunch with Cardinal George Pell in summer 2022. Credit: Father Michael Kong
