According to his secretary, 81-year-old Australian Cardinal George Pell, a prominent Catholic conservative and former top Vatican official exonerated of sexual abuse allegations in 2020, died on Tuesday. George Pell died on Tuesday night in Rome, according to Father Joseph Hamilton. He added that the Sydney archdiocese would issue a statement later.
Pell had hip surgery and later suffered heart difficulties, according to Melbourne’s archbishop, Peter Comensoli.
He claimed on Facebook that Cardinal Pell was a powerful and influential church leader in Australia and around the world.
Accusations Against George Pell: What Did He Do?
Several historical sexual crime allegations against Pell resulted from alleged encounters at a pool in his birthplace of Ballarat in the 1970s and St.
Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne in the 1990s resulted in his commitment to stand trial in May 2018.
The so-called swimmer’s lawsuit was dropped because the judge refused to allow certain evidence.
Pell adamantly rejected the allegations and refused to testify in the first two trials, resulting in a hung jury.
He was sentenced to six years in prison, making him the highest-ranking Catholic official ever imprisoned for child sex assault.
George Pell assaulted two adolescent choirboys
At the retrial, George Pell was found guilty on all five counts of assaulting two young choirboys at the cathedral while serving as Archbishop of Melbourne, and he was sentenced to six years in prison.
The conviction was overturned by Australia’s seven High Court judges, who all agreed that it had not been established beyond a reasonable doubt.
He had lost his initial appeal and had been held in solitary confinement for 404 days.
The disputed case was one of Australia’s most divisive, and some media outlets even broke a court order prohibiting trial coverage.
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George Pell was released from prison
The ruling permitted Pell, then 78, to be released after serving 13 months in prison, putting an end to the case of the most senior official accused in the global epidemic of historical sex abuse that has devastated the Catholic Church throughout the world.
From 2014 until 2016, former Melbourne and Sydney archbishop Pell served as the Vatican’s minister of the economy.
He then took time off in 2017 to return to Australia to defend himself against the claims.
He has lived in Rome since his acquittal in 2020.
Pell routinely attended the pontiff’s Masses, and following his return, Francis publicly lauded him.
Pell Was A Controversial Figure In the Church Prior to the sexual assault charges, Pell was a controversial figure in the Australian Catholic hierarchy for two decades.
Conservative Catholics admired him, but liberals detested him for his staunch opposition to same-sex marriage, abortion, and women’s ordination.
Several historical sexual crime allegations against Pell resulted from alleged encounters at a pool in his birthplace of Ballarat in the 1970s and St.
Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne in the 1990s resulted in his commitment to stand trial in May 2018.
The so-called swimmer’s lawsuit was dropped because the judge refused to allow certain evidence.
Pell, who had been dispatched to Rome to oversee the Vatican’s finances, returned and denied the allegations.
He did not testify in either of the two trials, the first of which ended in a hung jury.
