Status: 01/11/2023 01:16 am
Australian Cardinal Pell was at times number three in the Vatican. Then he was found guilty of abuse, after more than a year in prison, a court overturned the verdict. Pell died at age 81.
Australian Cardinal George Pell died in Rome aged 81. announced the Archbishop of Sydney, Anthony Fisher. He wrote on Facebook that the news of Pell’s death “was a huge shock to all of us”. He asked for prayers for the deceased. According to media reports quoting Pell’s private secretary, the cardinal died in the Italian capital after a routine operation.
As Pope Francis’ finance chief, Pell was for years number three in the Vatican and the highest-ranking minister in the history of the Catholic Church to be convicted of child sexual abuse.
First convicted, then acquitted
In December 2018, the former Cardinal of the Curia was sentenced by a Melbourne court to six years in prison for allegedly molesting two choirboys after a mass in the sacristy of Melbourne Cathedral in 1996. Due to insufficient evidence – there was only a witness for the prosecution and an unlikely constellation of crimes – the verdict was overturned. After about 13 months in prison, Pell was able to get out of prison again. At the time, he said: “I have always maintained my innocence in the face of great injustice. This was overturned today by a unanimous decision of the Supreme Court. I hold no grudge against my accuser, I do not want my acquittal to mean the injuries and add to the bitterness felt by so many; already there is enough hurt and bitterness”.
In the May 2020 Royal Commission in Australia report, Pell is not completely unscathed: as Episcopal vicar in Ballarat in the early 1970s, he would have known, as others have, that a notorious bully was repeatedly transferred instead of being reported.
Pell attended Benedict’s funeral. paper
Despite allegations of abuse against him many years before the trial, Pell made a career out of the Church. In 2014, he was appointed by Pope Francis as Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy to clean up Vatican finances. Thus Pell, who was numbered among the Vatican’s conservatives, came into conflict with the old structures and habits of other responsible people.
Last week, Pell sat very close to the coffin of the late Pope Benedict XVI. After the ceremony, the acting Pope called him “a great man” – it was his formal rehabilitation.
Since the verdict was overturned, Pell has spent half the year in Rome and the other half in Australia. After his death, 125 of the 223 cardinals of the universal Church are still under 80 and therefore entitled to vote in the papal election.