Prominent Cardinal Dies At The Age Of 81(PHOTO)

Prominent Cardinal Dies At The Age Of 81(PHOTO)

Cardinal George Pell of Australia, a former Vatican treasurer who was the most senior member of the Catholic clergy to be convicted of child sex abuse before his convictions were overturned, died at the age of 81.

Pell died on Tuesday night in Rome, according to his private secretary.

He was previously the archbishop of Melbourne and the archbishop of Sydney, and he was once the Vatican’s third-highest-ranking Catholic.

Pell died from heart complications following hip surgery, according to Archbishop Peter Comensoli, the current archbishop of Melbourne.

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“Cardinal Pell was a very significant and influential Church leader, both in Australia and internationally, deeply committed to Christian discipleship,” he said in a statement on Facebook.

Pell was imprisoned for 13 months before Australia’s highest court overturned his conviction for sexually assaulting two choir boys in the 1990s in 2020.

The decision allowed Pell, who was 78 at the time, to walk free. In a scandal that rocked the Roman Catholic Church worldwide, he was the most senior member of the church to be accused of historical sexual abuse.

Pell served as the Vatican’s Economy Minister from 2014 to 2017, when he took a leave of absence to return to Australia to face the assault charges.

He had been in Rome since his acquittal and had met with Pope Francis several times. He attended Pope Benedict XVI’s funeral last week.

Even before the sexual assault allegations, Pell was a divisive figure in Australia, revered by conservative Catholics but despised by liberals for his outspoken opposition to same-sex marriage, abortion, and women’s ordination.

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