Cardinal George Pell, former Vatican treasurer imprisoned for sexual abuse and later acquitted, has died

Australian cardinal George Pellwho became Vatican treasurer before being sentenced, jailed and then acquitted of sexual abuse charges in his country, died on Tuesday in Rome aged 81.

“It is with deep sadness that I can confirm that His Eminence Cardinal George Pell passed away in Rome early this morning,” Australian Archbishop Anthony Fisher said in a statement sent to AFP.

Pell died suddenly, due to complications in a hip operation practiced in the Italian capital.

Previously in charge of finance, he was considered vatican number 3. However, his name became better known in 2018, when he became the highest authority in the Catholic Church to face trial for alleged sexual abuse.

It was in the context of reports of facts recorded in Australia between the 60s and 90s, years in which Pell began his work as a priest and then landed at the archbishopric of Melbourne, in the state of Victoria. The investigation included “multiple” historic allegations of alleged child sexual abuse.

To deal with that process, which began when the Victoria Police filed a complaint against him in June 2017, Pope Francis has granted Pell a “period of leave” from his position as prefect of the Vatican Secretariat for the Economy.

At the time, Judge Belinda Wallington found there was enough evidence to open a formal trial for alleged pedophilia. Pell pleaded not guilty instead.

In March 2019, he received a six-year prison sentence for pedophilia against two altar boys in December 1996, whom he cornered when they were 13-year-old boarders at the prestigious St. Kevin’s School. The gesture was repeated with one of them a few weeks later.

after passing 13 months in prisonin April 2020 the Supreme Court he acquitted him of the two altar boys’ five allegations of sexual abuse, for the benefit of the doubt.

In September of that year he returned to the Vatican, where a month later he was received in private audience by the Pope.

“My trial was not a referendum on the Catholic Church or how Australian church authorities have dealt with child abuse in the church. The question was whether I had committed these horrific crimes, and I haven’t,” she said at the time. .

Pell has participated in two important conclaves in the recent history of the Catholic Church: in 2005 he was part of the meeting from which Pope Benedict XVI emerged and eight years later he was in the conclave in which Pope Francis was elected.

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