Cardinal George Pell is spending his first night in jail as he awaits sentencing for molesting two choirboys minutes after leading Mass.
He is locked up in the protection wing of Melbourne Assessment Prison to prevent him from being attacked as a hated paedophile by other inmates.
These 299 other prisoners include notorious criminals like Bourke Street rampage driver Jimmy Gargasoulas and Eurydice Dixon’s murderer Jaymes Todd.
Cardinal George Pell is spending his first night in jail as he awaits sentencing for molesting two choirboys (pictured in his last steps as a free man arriving at court on Wednesday)
After arriving in a white prison truck Pell, 77, had to discard all his belongings except his religious necklace and trade them for prison clothes.
He endured a humiliating strip search where he had to spread his bottom cheeks wide, lift his testicles, and poke out his tongue.
Once a top Catholic Church official, Pell will now be just another prisoner subject to standard rules and requirements that will govern his life.
Pell would likely be handed an ‘immediate needs pack’ with $3 phone credit, a pack of cigarettes, box of matches, toothbrush, toothpaste, sachets of coffee and sugar, and tea bags, 600ml of full cream milk, and two condoms.
The typical list of items inmates are allowed to have during his prison stay isn’t much longer and a far cry from his lavish life as the Vatican’s third in command.
Clothes include six pairs each of undies or boxer shorts and socks, two singlets, two jumpers or jackets, four tops, four pairs of pants and shorts, and pyjamas.
After arriving in a white prison truck (pictured) Pell, 77, had to discard all his belongings except his religious necklace and trade them for prison clothes.
He is locked up in the protection wing of Melbourne Assessment Prison to prevent him from being attacked as a hated paedophile by other inmates
He also gets a suit and dress shoes tucked away for court appearances, such as his sentencing hearing on March 13 and his subsequent appeal.
Pell’s shoes will be limited to one pair plus thongs, a belt – with a small buckle the prison will have to approve of – and a cap.
For entertainment in his tiny cell he is allowed six books and six magazines, plus his reading glasses to make out the letters.
Only six photographs to remind him of his former life are allowed, and they can’t be polariods or otherwise laminated.
His meager $140-a-month allowance, a far cry from how he lived it up in Rome, will have to pay for his meals, telephone calls, and toiletries.
He will first be sent to Melbourne Assessment Prison (inmate pictured arriving) while authorities decide where to send him for potentially the last years of the frail priest’s life
Pell was fond of showing children his genitals, but he will probably enjoy the humiliating strip search and medical check he will endure on arrival far less
Pell would likely be locked in isolation behind a door marked with just his prison ID number because of his high profile, spending 23 hours a day in a suicide-proof cell.
For an hour a day he would shuffle under guard to a small exercise yard rimmed with razor wire, feeling the sun on his face with only watchful guards for company.
Meals are at set times of day and usually are bland and far from hot, rotating between fish, pork, and beef, with Vegemite banned as it can be made into alcohol.
Breakfast is at 8am, lunch at 11.30am and dinner at 3.30pm.
As the first experience inmates have with prison, MAP is a confronting place and all the more depressing as the tram is audible from inside.
Former inmates say ‘a pervasive sense of despair and misery permeates the building’ for this reason.
At the height of his power, Cardinal George Pell blew $750,000 on luxuries like fancy gowns and extravagant furniture while living in a $30 million flat – but now he’s going to jail
For an hour a day he would shuffle under guard to a small exercise yard rimmed with razor wire, feeling the sun on his face with only watchful guards for company
Senator Derryn Hinch recalled how depressing the cells were in the diary of his two weeks in solitary confinement for contempt of court in 2014.
‘You are like a caged animal. Can’t even see out the slot window in the cell door. It has a cloth cover on the outside,’ he wrote for the Herald Sun.
Prisoners usually spend between seven and 21 days at the MAP while authorities decide where to send them for the rest of their sentence.
Pell may be reunited with an old friend, paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale, whom he was housemates with in Ballarat during the 1970s.
The 84-year-old, who abused 65 boys as young as four, has been in jail since 1993 and is serving the last years of his sentence at Langi Kal Kal.
The minimum security prison, where Pell could be sent, is populated almost entirely by sex offenders and get better treatment than other prisoners.
Slices of life include a communal kitchen to cook their own food, along with a pool, a tennis court, a living room, and laundry.
This humbling, tedious existence would be a steep fall from grace after he spent $750,000 of church money just a few years ago
The cardinal was named the Vatican’s Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy in 2014, making him the third highest-ranking cleric in Rome. He is pictured with Pope Francis
He could also be sent to Port Phillip Prison purely because it would be easier to care for his long list of medical conditions.
This humbling, tedious existence would be a steep fall from grace after he spent $750,000 of church money just a few years ago.
Pell was picked by Pope Francis to slash waste in the church as its chief financial officer, but posted a hefty bill setting up his Vatican pad.
Staying at the $30 million Domus Australia guesthouse in Rome, at a cost of $5,100 along with an office, he also employed an Australian assistant for $21,000 a month.
He kitted out his new digs with $87,000 worth of luxury furniture, including blowing $6,650 on kitchen sink fittings.
Other luxuries included $3,600 on tailored religious robes and thousands more on business class flights around the world.
All that is gone and replaced with a cell where the ageing cleric, who was only allowed to stay free after his conviction to get a double knee replacement, may die.
Staying at the $30 million Domus Australia guesthouse in Rome, at a cost of $5,100 along with an office, he also employed an Australian assistant for $21,000 a month
He kitted out his new digs with $87,000 worth of luxury furniture, including blowing $6,650 on kitchen sink fittings
Pell was found guilty by a County Court jury of one count of sexually penetrating a child and four counts of committing an act of indecency.
Those verdicts were made public only after the abandonment of a second trial over allegations Pell indecently assaulted boys in Ballarat, 110km north-west of Melbourne, in the 1970s.
Pell limped from court surrounded by a brigade of yellow-vested police officers, with a passerby screaming for him to ‘rot in hell’.
Two 13-year-old boys on scholarships to the prestigious St Kevin’s College in late 1996 and were caught swigging sacramental wine in the priest’s sacristy by Pell, newly installed as Archbishop of Melbourne.
Pell could then be sent to Port Phillip Prison (standard cell pictured) purely because it would be easier to care for his long list of medical conditions
Langi Kal Kal (workshop pictured) is another potential destination – a minimum security prison populated almost entirely by sex offenders who get better treatment than other prisoners
If Pell ends up in Langi Kal Kal he will be reunited with old friend and fellow paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale (pictured), whom he was housemates with in Ballarat during the 1970s
Pell scolded the boys, then exposed his penis from beneath his ornate ceremonial robes, and molested the pair including forcing one to perform oral sex on him.
‘You’re in trouble,’ he told them before the assaults.
One of the boys said he was sexually assaulted again by Pell a month or so after he was raped, recalling that he was pushed against a cathedral wall.
‘He shoved me against the wall violently and squeezed my genitals,’ the court heard.
The cardinal’s barrister Robert Richter QC argued the allegations were a ‘far-fetched fantasy’, that Pell was always accompanied after mass and that his cumbersome robes would have prevented him revealing his genitals.
‘Only a madman would attempt to rape boys in the priest’s sacristy immediately after Sunday solemn mass,’ he told the jury.
Pell has always maintained his innocence and has lodged an appeal against his convictions.