Cardinal George Pell dies in Rome aged 81 after hip surgery; former Vatican finances chief was Australia’s top-ranking Catholic
Cardinal George Pell, Australia’s highest-ranked Catholic cleric, has died in Rome at the age of 81.
Key points:
- George Pell died of heart complications after hip surgery
- He was in charge of the Vatican’s finances from 2014 to 2019
- Pell was sent to prison for child sexual abuse in 2019, but had his convictions quashed
Cardinal Pell, who was in charge of Vatican finances between 2014 and 2019, was jailed in Australia for child sexual abuse in 2019 but vigorously maintained his innocence and had his convictions quashed more than a year later.
Archbishop of Melbourne Peter Comensoli said Cardinal Pell died “from heart complications following hip surgery”.
“Cardinal Pell was a very significant and influential Church leader, both in Australia and internationally, deeply committed to Christian discipleship,” he said.
“At this immediate moment, let our prayers go out to the God of Jesus Christ, whom Cardinal Pell wholeheartedly believed in and followed, that he may be welcomed into eternal life.
“Our prayers of comfort and condolence are also with his family, especially his only surviving sibling David Pell.”
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he had expressed the federal government’s condolences to Archbishop of Sydney Anthony Fisher.
“For many people, particularly of the Catholic faith, this will be a difficult day,” Mr Albanese said.
He said the federal government would help bring Cardinal Pell’s remains back to Australia, where he will be buried in the crypt of St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney.
Cardinal Pell served as both archbishop of Melbourne and Sydney before being elevated to the College of Cardinals by Pope John Paul II in 2003.
As archbishop of Melbourne in 1996, he was responsible for establishing the Melbourne Response, which offered capped compensation payments of $50,000 to victims of sexual abuse at the hands of clergy.
The scheme proved controversial, with a 2015 report released by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse recommending it be operated and administered independently of the Melbourne archbishop’s office.
Cardinal Pell made several appearances at the royal commission, which ultimately found he knew of abuse by paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale in the 1980s but did not take adequate action to address it, a finding Cardinal Pell disputed.
He was seen in public in Rome last week at the funeral of former Pope Benedict XVI.
Dr Miles Pattenden, a senior research fellow at the Australian Catholic University, said the cardinal’s legacy would be “mixed”.
“George Pell was one of the most conservative figures of his generation in the global church,” Dr Pattenden said.
“He was a staunch defender of traditional positions on morality and also on questions of liturgy and, of course, that won him many admirers in the church and just as many opponents.”
Dr Pattenden said while Cardinal Pell had “many admirers”, there were also “many people who hold him at least indirectly responsible for many of the problems which have assailed the Australian church over the past 20 or 30 years”.
He said there were many who wished Cardinal Pell had “been called to account in a fuller way for some of his decisions as archbishop”.
Pell was jailed for sexual abuse, then freed by High Court
Cardinal Pell was convicted of child sexual abuse in 2019 and sentenced to six years in prison.
He served 13 months of his sentence being released from Melbourne’s Barwon jail on April 7, 2020 after the High Court overturned his convictions.
The success of his High Court challenge brought a five-year legal battle to an end.
He had faced two juries over allegations he abused two 13-year-old choirboys in the sacristy at St Patrick’s Cathedral when he was archbishop of Melbourne in the late 1990s.
One of the boys had died by the time of the prosecution, so Cardinal Pell was convicted on the evidence of the other.
He never gave evidence, but vehemently denied the allegations in interviews with police.
The first jury could not reach a verdict, but the second found him guilty.
That was later backed up by a Victorian Court of Appeal ruling.
But the High Court overturned both these findings, ruling that “acting rationally on the whole of the evidence, [the jury] ought to have entertained a doubt as to the applicant’s guilt with respect to each of the offences for which he was convicted”.
Some of Australia’s most well-known newspapers, websites and radio stations were slugged more than $1 million in fines for being in contempt of court during the child sex abuse trial.
Cardinal Pell lived in Sydney in the months after his release.
Death a ‘great shock’ says Archbishop of Sydney
George Pell was born in 1941 in Ballarat and began his studies into priesthood at Corpus Christian College in Werribee before travelling to Rome to study.
Sydney Archbishop Anthony Fisher confirmed Cardinal Pell’s death with “deep sadness”.
“This news comes as a great shock to all of us,” he said on Facebook.
“Please pray for the repose of the soul of Cardinal Pell, for comfort and consolation for his family and for all of those who loved him and are grieving him at this time.”
In a statement, former prime minister Tony Abbott said Australia had lost a “great son” who was also a “committed defender of Catholic orthodoxy and a staunch advocate for the virtues of Western Civilisation”.
National Catholic Reporter editor Joshua McElwee told ABC Radio Melbourne Cardinal Pell had been seen as a “kind of reformer”.
“[He was] someone who was kind of brusque, could kind of make enemies by a very bruising attitude or kind of always wanting things to go his way,” McElwee said.
He said Cardinal Pell did not have any official duties after returning to Rome following the quashing of his convictions.
McElwee said Pope Francis would issue a telegram to the Australian government recognising Cardinal Pell’s death and the role he played in the Catholic Church before funeral arrangements were made.
