Published:
Jan 11, 2023 03:59 GMT
The cardinal, who denied all the accusations, spent more than a year in jail before in 2020 he was acquitted and his conviction overturned by the High Court of Australia.
Cardinal George Pell, former “number three” of the Vatican, who spent more than a year in prison accused of sexual abuse of minors, but was later acquitted, died this Tuesday at the age of 81 in Rome, reports the Australian network ABC.
According to Peter Comensoli, Pell’s successor as Archbishop of the City of Melbourne, the cardinal suffered fatal heart complications after hip surgery. “Cardinal Pell was a very significant and influential church leader, both in Australia and internationally, deeply committed to Christian discipleship,” he stated.
For his part, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the government would help repatriate the remains of the cardinal, who had traveled to Rome to attend the funeral of Pope Benedict XVI last week.
In March 2019, the former Vatican treasurer was sentenced to 6 years in prison for sexual offenses against minors, after being convicted of sexually abusing two 16-year-old altar boys when he was Archbishop of Melbourne, between December 1996 and the beginning of 1997. The court ruled that he would have to serve a minimum of 3 years and 8 months in prison before parole would be considered.
However, in April 2020, the Australian High Court overturned the cardinal’s conviction, which denied all the allegations, allowing him to be released from prison immediately. The Australian Supreme Court ruled that, during Pell’s trial, the jury “should have been in doubt” about his guilt. Thus, the seven judges of that court ordered the annulment of his conviction and, instead, handed down a verdict of acquittal.
