Australian Cardinal George Pell has died in Rome at the age of 81. Archbishop of Sydney Anthony Fisher confirmed his death on Wednesday night on his Facebook page. Pell’s former Archdiocese confirmed the authenticity of the message to the German Press Agency.
For years, under Pope Francis, Pell was the number three in the Vatican and the highest-ranking minister in the history of the Catholic Church to be convicted of child molestation. However, in 2020, Pell was acquitted on appeal after serving around 13 months and released from prison. Pell died on Tuesday evening after complications from a long-planned hip operation, the Vatican’s own media portal “Vatican News” reported, among other things.
The intervention had therefore been planned for a long time. Last Thursday, Pell attended the funeral services for the late Pope Benedict XVI. in Rome. Since the spectacular acquittal and release from prison in April 2020, the cardinal had calmed down.
Career despite allegations
Pell was born on June 8, 1941 in Ballarat, Australia. He was ordained a priest in 1966 and elected auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Melbourne in 1987. In the same year he received episcopal consecration. He was Archbishop of Melbourne from 1996 to 2001 and Archbishop of Sydney from 2001 to 2014. Even then, Pell was confronted with allegations of abuse – in 2002 he temporarily suspended his office as Archbishop of Sydney, but he rejected the allegations.
Although allegations against Pell persisted, he made a career for himself in the Catholic Church. Pope John Paul II admitted Pell to the College of Cardinals in October 2003. The studied philosopher and theologian voted accordingly in the 2005 conclave, from which the German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI. and in the 2013 conclave that elected Jorge Mario Bergoglio – now Pope Francis.
Pell became a confidant of Francis – not only did he put him on an advisory board, but he made him prefect of the Economic Secretariat in 2014. The task: to reorganize the finances of the Vatican. So Pell became Francis’ man for the economy, which he himself says he always tried to avoid. But Pell had a clear perspective, Francis praised the cardinal in a television interview with the Italian private broadcaster Canale 5 last December. “Then he had to stay in prison for almost two years because of this slander that was against him.”
Francis called Pell a great man
The case on which Pell was being tried in his home country dates back to 1996/97, when Pell had just become archbishop of Australia’s second largest city, Melbourne. After a service he is said to have passed on the two choirboys, who were 13 years old at the time. The testimony of a former choirboy was instrumental in the verdict, which became public knowledge in early 2019. He was sentenced to six years in prison.
But Pell’s defense attorneys argued that the former choirboy’s testimony was insufficient to establish the cardinal’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. They also stated that after a Sunday mass it was impossible for an archbishop to be alone in the sacristy with two choirboys for five or six minutes – as it was said to have been during an assault. Australia’s highest court granted the appeal in April 2020 for lack of evidence.
After 13 months, Pell was surprisingly a free man again – and returned to the Vatican a few months after his release, in the middle of the corona pandemic and despite travel restrictions. In December, Francis called Pell a great man who is greatly owed. Pell’s successor in the Archdiocese of Sydney wrote on Wednesday that the cardinal’s news was “a great shock to everyone”. Many others, especially those outside the Catholic Church, are likely to remember the cardinal’s deep fall.