Rome
CNN
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Cardinal George PellThe highest-ranking Catholic official who was convicted of child molestation before his sentence was overturned in 2020, has died, according to his secretary. He was 81 years old.
Father Joseph Hamilton confirmed Pell’s death on Tuesday night local time after being admitted to a hospital in Rome for hip replacement surgery. caused
Born June 8, 1941, in the rural Australian city of Ballarat, Pell went through the ranks of the Roman Catholic Church to become the Vatican Treasurer, considered by many to be the third highest position in the Church. rice field.
He was in charge of Pope Francis’ financial reforms from 2014 to 2019, which largely stalled when he was recalled to Australia to face historic sexual abuse allegations.
Pell was convicted of these charges in 2018 and served 13 months in prison until the Australian High Court overturned his conviction in April 2020. Pell vehemently denied the charges, which he dismissed as “a product of fantasy” in a 2016 police interview.
In a two-page summary of the judgment, the High Court said the jury “should have questioned the applicant’s guilt,” and ordered the conviction to be overturned.
In a statement, Archbishop Anthony Fisher of Sydney expressed his sorrow at Pell’s death. , pray for the consolation and consolation of all those who mourn him now.
When asked about Pell’s death on Tuesday, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese expressed condolences to Fisher on behalf of the government. My condolences to all who are in mourning,” he said.
Pell was a divisive figure in Australia, and many on Twitter used the opportunity of his death to voice their support for child sexual abuse survivors.
Pell was ordained a Catholic priest in December 1966 and subsequently studied in Rome, Oxford and Cambridge.
He returned to Australia in 1971 and spent the next twenty years as a priest in small parishes in Victoria and New South Wales.
In 1996, Pope John Paul II appointed him Archbishop of Melbourne. So Pell introduced one of the Catholic Church’s earliest programs to address accusations of sexual abuse. This is called Melbourne his response. Critics say it was meant to prevent a scandal and could have been more lenient with the victims.
Pell was made Archbishop of Sydney in 2001 and Cardinal in 2003. Under John Paul II and as a member of the College of Cardinals, he was one of the high-ranking ecclesiastical dignitaries who elected the late Pope Benedict in 2005 and Pope Francis in 2013.
In 2014, Pell moved to Rome after Pope Francis handpicked him as Vatican Treasurer and one of the nine advisors of the Cardinal Council to the Pope.
Pell has also been outspoken about his views on same-sex marriage, abortion and birth control.
At the 2015 Fota VIII International Liturgy Conference in Cork, Ireland, Pell said Western societies are abandoning many of the legal underpinnings of Christianity by passing same-sex marriage laws.
While in Rome, Pell gave evidence before the Royal Commission of Australia on his knowledge of and his role in Catholic Church sexual abuse cases in Australia on institutional responses to child sexual abuse. I was asked to
In an unedited survey published in 2020, The commission found that Pell knew about the sexual abuse at church but did not report it to police.
Launched in 2012 under former Prime Minister Julia Gillard, the Royal Commission interviewed nearly 8,000 survivors of child sexual abuse over five years and referred to more than 2,500 issues. to the police.
According to the report, as early as 1973, Pell “was not only aware of the sexual abuse of children by clergymen, but was also thinking about ways to avoid situations that encouraged gossip about it.”
In 2017, Victoria Police announced that Pell had been charged with multiple past sexual assault charges.
His first trial ended in a jury hang after several days of deliberation, with a jury of twelve unable to reach a verdict. A second trial sentenced him to six years in prison, which began on March 13, 2019, shocking the entire church.
prosecutor’s case hinged Testimony of a man who said Pell had sexually abused him and a fellow choirman after mass at St Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne one Sunday while Pell was archbishop. bottom.
A second man, who never told anyone about the attack, committed suicide in 2014 before allegations surfaced.
The only witness claimed that Pell cornered them in the priest’s sacristy and forced them to have sex. The alleged victim’s testimony has not been made public, but the jury found him very convincing and convicted him unanimously.
While in prison, he wrote a diary, later published in Italian by the Cantagari Publishers. He said he was held in solitary confinement to protect himself, and called the sexual abuse within his church “a kind of mental and moral cancer.” Vatican News reported.
In 2020, the Australian High Court unanimously overturned five counts of past child sexual abuse convictions, vacating the convictions and ordering acquittal instead.
On Tuesday, a lawyer representing the family of the deceased former choirman said he would file a civil suit against the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne over claims against Pell’s property.
“The civil trial likely provided an opportunity to cross-examine Pell and truly test his defense against these allegations,” Shine said in a statement. There is still a lot of evidence and courts will be called upon to rule on that evidence in time.”
Albanese said the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade was providing assistance to bring Pell’s body back to Australia.
