George Pell, cardinal whose abuse conviction was overturned, dies at 81

Advisor to Pope Francis and prominent figure in Australia, Cardinal Pell went to prison for abusing two boys in the 1990s, but a higher court later acquitted him.

Cardinal George Pell, an Australian cleric and adviser to Pope Francis who became the longest serving Roman Catholic prelate sent to prison for sexual abuse on children, before being later acquitted of all charges, died in Rome on Tuesday. He was 81.

The cause of death was complications from hip replacement surgery, according to Peter Comensoli, the Archbishop of Melbourne, who confirmed the death in a post on Twitter. Cardinal Pell had traveled to Rome last week to attend the funeral of Pope Benedict XVI.

For decades, Cardinal Pell has been one of the Australia's most powerful nuns. A former athlete with a formidable intellect and a combative side, he was a conservative voice heard regularly in the media, strongly opposing abortion while defending the church against accusations of child abuse as a as archbishop of the diocese of Melbourne and then of the diocese of Sydney.

For many Australian Catholics, the personal journey of Cardinal Pell, from his origins in the small town of Ballarat until his stratospheric rise through the ranks of the Vatican, had at one time been a source of personal inspiration, said journalist Lucie Morris-Marr, author of "Fallen: The Inside Story of the Secret Trial and Conviction of Cardinal George Pell".

"He was really seen as an achievement, a superstar, in fact," Ms. Morris-Marr said. of his career and his reputation have been terribly, irrevocably damaged, due to allegations of child abuse."

From 2014 to 2019, Cardinal Pell served as the church's financial czar and third in command, and he tried to push through reforms to make his finances more transparent. Those efforts were truncated in 2017, when he was forced to return to Australia to stand trial on sex abuse charges dating back to the 1990s. airport on his arrival from Rome.

In December 2018 he was convicted by an Australian jury of five counts of child molestation . abuse of two altar boys which allegedly took place in 1996, while he was in Melbourne. Less than two years later, in April 2020, Australia's highest court overturned the conviction, saying there was "a significant possibility" that he was not guilty.

Throughout the proceedings, Cardinal Pell maintains his innocence. At a press conference in Rome in 2017, he said he had been the victim of "relentless defamation". He said, "The very idea of ​​sexual abuse is abhorrent to me." -deceased altar boy who alleged the cleric abused the boy when he was Archbishop of Melbourne. In a statement, the plaintiff's attorney said the lawsuit would continue, adding, "There is still ample evidence to support this assertion."

Image Cardinal Pell leaving a courthouse in Melbourne, Australia, in 2019.Credit...David Crosling/EPA, via Shutterstock

Furthermore, a 2017 Australian government inquiry into the abuse of tens of thousands of children in churches, schools and other institutions over a period of decades found that the Cardinal Pell was aware of child sexual abuse by other Roman Catholic priests. as early as 1974, but did nothing.