Cardinal Pell, Bishop Álvarez point to the power of prayer
“God writes straight with crooked lines, and given that I was sentenced to jail, I do regard it as a gift and a grace” said Cardinal Pell
(PerMariam) — Examples of authentic reliance upon the power of prayer can often feel like a much rarer thing to find today when contrasted with the golden ages of Church history and the many centuries replete with great missionaries fired with tireless zeal. But perhaps Catholics of today do not have to look very far to find two instances in which this truly Catholic practice of prayer has been exemplified.
Bishop Rolando Álvarez of Nicaragua and the late Cardinal George Pell of Australia spring to mind.
Bishop Rolando Álvarez was placed under house arrest by the Nicaraguan government in 2022 and then under police arrest in July 2023. The bishop – a prominent critic of the totalitarian regime – was sentenced to 26 years in jail, but after serving many months behind bars was eventually released to the Vatican in January 2024 along with Bishop Isidoro del Carmen Mora Ortega and a number of clergy and seminarians.
For his part, George Cardinal Pell spent over 400 days in prison in his native Australia for trumped up charges of sexual abuse of which he was unanimously acquitted.
As I wrote recently for OnePeterFive, these two prelates provide an example of a reliance upon prayer in the face of what would seem to be insurmountable odds.
“I always thought and believed in my freedom,” said Bishop Alvarez, speaking to EWTN last month, marking a full year after his release from Nicaragua to the Vatican in January 2024:
“I always believed in my release. When? I don’t know, I didn’t know, but I always hoped to be set free and what sustained me was prayer.”
Such words closely resemble the style of those uttered by Cdl. Pell upon his own release from prison in Australia. He 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.”
The joint testimony of two prelates comes as a true testament to the timeless teaching of the Catholic Faith which is so often neglected today. Their utter reliance upon prayer in the face of unjust persecution and imprisonment – and belief in the power of that prayer – demonstrates a liveliness of Faith that is nowadays often left aside by those who favor having the Church conform to modernity and abandoning the “outdated” forms of Catholic life.
To continue reading the ways in which Cdl. Pell and Bp. Alvarez witnessed to the Catholic faith, please find the full article at OnePeterFive.