Parents Claim Intercession of Cardinal Pell Saved Their Son’s Life

His Eminence was definitely a "White Martyr". "White martyrdom consists in a man’s abandoning everything he loves for God’s sake, though he suffer fasting or labor thereat." ~ The Cambrai Homily, the earliest known Irish homily.

From LifeSiteNews

By Michael Haynes

The archbishop of Sydney has relayed claims that the late Cardinal George Pell miraculously interceded to save an 18-month boy after he nearly drowned.

The archbishop of Sydney has relayed claims that the late Cardinal George Pell miraculously interceded to save an 18-month boy after he nearly drowned.

In a exclusive published by The Australian, news of an alleged miraculous occurrence was broken into the media sphere, via a talk given by Archbishop Anthony Fisher, O.P.

Fisher, the archbishop of Sydney since late 2014, reportedly said on Wednesday that the parents of an 18-month-old boy in America were attributing the miraculous survival of their son to Cardinal Pell.

Fisher said that he was told about the event last week, in which a young boy named Vincent “fell into a swimming pool” in Phoenix, Arizona, and “stopped breathing for 52 minutes.”

The archbishop said that Vincent’s “parents prayed for the ­intercession of Cardinal Pell.”

“The boy survived and came off life support free of any damage to brain or lungs or heart. He’s fine now and his doctors are calling it a miracle,” Fisher said, according to The Australian.

LifeSiteNews contacted the Archdiocese of Sydney seeking corroboration and further information on the event, but did not receive a response by time of publication.

The news report was written by Tess Livingstone – a biographer of the late cardinal, at whose book launch Fisher was speaking on Wednesday.

According to The Australian, Vincent’s parents had met Pell in Phoenix during a 2021 tour he made.

When Vincent was undergoing hospital treatment and was intubated, his mother’s brother contacted Father Joseph Hamilton – Pell’s former secretary – asking for prayers.

Hamilton stated that Vincent’s parents “had prayed for the late cardinal to intercede for their son because they were impressed when they met him in Phoenix.”

The priest added to this correspondent, that Vincent’s parents prayed to the late Cardinal Pell, along with asking for the intercession of canonized saints for their son.

The young boy reportedly spent 10 days in the hospital, and was discharged only recently.

The Catholic Church in Fr. John Harden’s dictionary describes a miracle as “a sensibly perceptible effect, surpassing at least the powers of visible nature, produced by God to witness to some truth or testify to someone’s sanctity.”

The most recent catechism notes a miracle to be “a sign or wonder, such as a healing or the control of nature, which can only be attributed to divine power.”

For an event to be formally recognized as a miracle by the Church requires a lengthy process with rigorous examination to rule out any natural explanation. Miracles would be included in the overall process of examining a person’s cause for canonization, and for an event to be declared a miracle it must be approved by at least 5 out of 7, or 4 out of 6, experts involved.

Pell died suddenly in January 2023 following a “routine hip replacement surgery” earlier in the day at a hospital in Rome. Fr. Hamilton stated at the time that Pell suffered a suspected cardiac arrest after the procedure, which had itself been a success.

Born in Ballarat, Victoria, on June 8, 1941, Pell was ordained in the Vatican in 1966, appointed auxiliary bishop of Melbourne in 1987, and then made archbishop of the see in 1996.

He did not remain much longer in Melbourne, as John Paul II made him archbishop of Sydney in 2001, a position he held until 2014. John Paul II then announced Pell’s rise to the College of Cardinals in the fall of 2003.

The towering Australian cardinal held a number of curial positions in Rome, most notably serving as the first prefect of the newly established Secretariat for the Economy in February 2014, with the public mandate of overseeing finances within the Vatican.

Returning to Australia voluntarily to face charges of sexual abuse, Pell spent 405 days in prison. He always denied the charges, however, which hinged on the uncorroborated testimony of one person, and in 2020 was unanimously acquitted by the High Court of Australia. The court explained that the jury, “acting rationally on the whole of the evidence, ought to have entertained a doubt as to the applicant’s guilt with respect to each of the offences for which he was convicted.”

Following his acquittal and release, Pell described his jail term “a gift and a grace.” “God writes straight with crooked lines, and given that I was sentenced to jail, I do regard it as a gift and a grace,” Pell told reporters in December 2020.

“I’d have to hasten to add that I still regret that it happened,” he continued. “I wouldn’t have chosen it, but there I was and, please God, I did my Christian duty while I was in jail.”

Reflecting on Pell’s life just after his sudden death in 2023, Cardinal Gerhard Müller said that “he was a great witness to the truth of the gospel and worked very well and diligently in the Lord’s vineyard. But he also suffered much for the Church of Christ and has been slandered and innocently thrown into prison because of his fidelity to the crucified and risen Jesus.”