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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 southern Australia as the son of a pub landlord when he aspired to be a professional Australian Rules Football player, a