Australian Cardinal George Pell, whose child sexual abuse convictions were quashed, dies at 81 | 24CA News

Australian Cardinal George Pell, a number one Catholic conservative and former high Vatican official who in 2020 was acquitted of sexual abuse allegations, died on Tuesday on the age of 81, his non-public secretary stated.

Father Joseph Hamilton informed Reuters that Pell died in Rome on Tuesday night time. He stated the archdiocese of Sydney could be issuing an announcement later. 

Archbishop Peter Comensoli, the archbishop of Melbourne, stated Pell had died from coronary heart problems following hip surgical procedure.

“Cardinal Pell was a very significant and influential Church leader, both in Australia and internationally, deeply committed to Christian discipleship,” he stated in an announcement on Facebook.

In 2020, an Australian appeals court docket quashed Pell’s 2018 convictions for sexually assaulting two choir boys within the Nineteen Nineties. 

The ruling allowed Pell, then 78, to stroll free after 13 months in jail, ending the case of essentially the most senior determine accused within the world scandal of historic intercourse abuse that has rocked the Catholic Church worldwide.

Pell, a former archbishop of Melbourne and Sydney, served as Vatican financial system minister from 2014 till he took a depart of absence in 2017 to return to Australia to face the costs.

He had been dwelling in Rome since his acquittal in 2020. Pell typically attended the pontiff’s Masses and Francis praised him publicly after his return.

Polarizing determine in church

Even earlier than the sexual assault allegations, Pell was a polarizing determine within the 20 years that he dominated the Australian Catholic hierarchy, revered by conservative Catholics however scorned by liberals for his staunch opposition to same-sex marriage, abortion and girls’s ordination.

In May 2018, Pell was dedicated to face trial on a number of historic sexual offence fees regarding alleged incidents at a pool in his hometown of Ballarat within the Seventies and at Melbourne’s St Patrick’s Cathedral within the Nineteen Nineties. The so-called swimmers case was dropped after a choose didn’t enable sure proof.

Returning from Rome the place he had been tasked with cleansing up the Vatican’s funds, Pell denied the allegations however didn’t take the stand at two trials, the primary of which ended with a hung jury. At the re-trial, a jury unanimously convicted him on 5 fees of assaulting two teenage choirboys on the cathedral when he was archbishop of Melbourne.

Pell was sentenced to 6 years in jail, changing into essentially the most senior Catholic official worldwide to go to jail for youngster intercourse assault. He misplaced his first enchantment and was in solitary confinement for 404 days till Australia’s seven High Court judges unanimously overturned his conviction, saying it was not confirmed past affordable doubt.

The former choirboy who accused Pell at his trial and was often called Witness J stated he understood it was troublesome to fulfill a legal court docket past the shadow of a doubt that youngster sexual assault offences occurred. The different former choirboy died earlier than Pell was charged.

Multiple controversies

The son of an Anglican gold miner and a religious Irish Catholic mom, Pell was gifted each academically and at sports activities. At 18, he landed a contract to play skilled Australian Rules soccer and performed within the reserves for a membership, however later selected to enter the seminary.

He went on to earn a doctorate in church historical past from Oxford after which grew to become a parish priest in Ballarat.

A burly and imposing determine at 1.9 metres, Pell rose to prominence within the mid-Nineteen Nineties first as archbishop of Melbourne, then archbishop of Sydney in 2001.

Through the Nineteen Nineties, the church more and more got here beneath assault for safeguarding monks and different church personnel who had dedicated sexual offences and for failing to help their victims.

Pell took satisfaction in having arrange one of many world’s first schemes to compensate victims of kid sexual abuse in Melbourne. Critics, nevertheless, later informed a government-appointed inquiry that the scheme was designed to influence victims to not pursue authorized motion.

The inquiry, often called a Royal Commission, started in 2013 a five-year investigation into youngster intercourse abuse within the Catholic Church and different establishments.

It discovered the church and different establishments had repeatedly didn’t hold youngsters secure with cultures of secrecy and cover-ups. It additionally discovered that Pell was conscious of kid intercourse abuse by at the least two monks within the Seventies and Nineteen Eighties and had didn’t take steps to get the monks eliminated.

The fee additionally stated Pell ought to have regarded into why Gerard Ridsdale, a priest who was subsequently convicted on greater than 130 fees of sexually abusing youngsters, was being moved from one parish to a different throughout the Seventies and Nineteen Eighties.

Pell informed the fee he was unaware of Ridsdale’s offences till his 1993 conviction.

“It’s a sad story and it wasn’t of much interest to me,” he stated.