Originally published at National Catholic Register
Two years after Cardinal George Pell’s unexpected death, a new biography on the larger-than-life Australian Church leader has been published that promises to serve as a definitive historical record of the cardinal’s life and achievements.
Titled Cardinal George Pell: Pax Invictus (“Peace to the Unconquered”), a longtime friend of the late prelate and correspondent for The Australian newspaper, Tess Livingstone, has written a comprehensive and authoritative 38-chapter biography, including the many challenges Cardinal Pell faced during his last decades.
Building on Livingstone’s much shorter biography published in 2002 before he was made cardinal, Pax Invictus — words taken from an inscription on a Melbourne war memorial that Cardinal Pell had long admired — includes his early years in south Australia as the son of a pub landlord when he aspired to be a professional Australian Rules Football player, as well as his formative time studying at Oxford University and the Pontifical Urbaniana University in Rome.
But this much expanded version from Ignatius Press now covers the many significant events that took place over the past 20 years, including what Livingstone describes as his “huge” work for the Vox Clara committee that helped guide the new English translation of the Roman
