Cardinal George Pell dies aged 81

• He died of cardiac issues following hip surgery.
• Cardinal Pell was Archbishop of Melbourne and Sydney before becoming one of the Pope’s closest advisers.
• He was appointed to supervise the Vatican’s finances in 2014

Cardinal George Pell, whose conviction on child molestation charges shook the Catholic Church until it was overturned, died at the age of 81.

The former Vatican treasurer is Australia’s highest-ranking Catholic cleric and the highest-ranking church official ever imprisoned for similar crimes.

According to church officials, he died of cardiac issues following hip surgery.

Cardinal Pell was Archbishop of Melbourne and Sydney before becoming one of the Pope’s closest advisers.

He was appointed to supervise the Vatican’s finances in 2014, but he resigned in 2017 to return to Australia to face child sex abuse charges.

In 2018, a jury found him guilty of sexually abusing two boys while serving as Archbishop of Melbourne in the 1990s.

Cardinal Pell, who always maintained his innocence, was imprisoned for 13 months before the High Court of Australia overturned the decision in 2020.

He returned to Rome after being released from detention and attended Pope Benedict XVI’s funeral last week.

The Archbishop of Sydney called the news as a “huge shock”, while Archbishop of Melbourne Peter Comensoli paid tribute to the cardinal as a man “fully committed to Christian discipleship”.

“Cardinal Pell was a major and powerful Church leader in Australia and around the world,” he added.

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