Cardinal George Pell, the most senior Catholic cleric to be convicted of sexually assaulting children, died Tuesday in Rome. He was 81.
Cardinal Pell spent more than a year in solitary confinement in his native Australia after a jury found him guilty in 2018 of assaulting two teenage choirboys in a Melbourne cathedral while he was the city’s archbishop in the 1990s. His conviction was overturned by a top Australian court in 2020.The cardinal remained a polarizing figure in Australia and the church even after his acquittal. For his detractors, he was a symbol of the abuse crisis.
Cardinal Pell gave evidence to the inquiry via video link from Rome, after his lawyers said that he was too unwell to travel to Australia. Pell suffered from hypertension, heart disease and cardiac dysfunction, and a doctor had concluded that a prolonged flight was dangerous to his health.A staunch conservative on the church’s moral teachings, the cardinal was an ally of Benedict and Francis when they led the church.
In the trial, the prosecution relied on the evidence of a former choirboy, who was then in his 30s and had a young family. He reported the alleged abuses to police in 2015, after another ex-choirboy died of an accidental drug overdose. The other choirboy did not make public accusations against Cardinal Pell.
Cardinal Pell’s accuser, whose name was not publicly disclosed, said he respected the decision’s decision to acquit and accepted the outcome. He said it highlighted the difficulties in child sexual abuse cases of satisfying a criminal court that the offense occurred beyond all reasonable doubt. “It is a very high standard to meet — a heavy burden,” he said in a statement at the time. “But the price we pay for weighting the system in favor of the accused is that many sexual offenses against children go unpunished.”
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