Cardinal George Pell has died aged 81, his passing has been confirmed by The Vatican.

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Pell passed away on Tuesday night, his death reportedly followed complications during hip replacement surgery.

He was the Vatican’s top finance minister before he left his position in 2017 to stand trial in Australia for child abuse offences.

In 2018 Cardinal Pell was convicted of molesting two teenage choirboys in St Patrick’s Cathedral while he was Archbishop of Melbourne in 1996. The cardinal always maintained he was innocent of the charges and his convictions were quashed in a unanimous decision by the High Court in 2020.

Pell, who was born in Ballarat, became a priest in the 1960s studying first at Corpus Christi College in Werribee, before finishing his studies in Rome. He was ordained at St Peter’s Basilica at The Vatican in 1966 and continued his education at Oxford University where he earned a Doctor of Philosophy in 1971.

He served as a priest in several parishes in Victoria before moving into the field of education earning an additional degree from Monash University. In 1996 he was named the Archbishop of Melbourne, and in 2001 became the Archbishop of Sydney.

He was later appointed to the College of Cardinals and became one of the cardinals eligible to vote on who should become the next Pope. He was involved in the election of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedict XVI. When Pope Benedict announced his retirement Pell was touted as a possible replacement.

Pell often spoke out against homosexuality. In 1990 he said homosexuality was wrong and “for the good of society it should not be encouraged”. He later suggested the best way to tackle high rates of suicide among young LGBT people would be to encourage them not to be gay, labeling homosexuality a “greater health hazard than smoking”.

During his time as Archbishop of Melbourne he also argued that abstinence and monogamy within marriage were the best way to tackle the spread of HIV in Africa, suggesting than this was a preferable approach to distributing condoms and encouraging safe sex practices.

“Condoms are encouraging promiscuity. They are encouraging irresponsibility.” Pell is recorded as saying. Health experts condemned his comments highlighting that there was overwhelming research showing that a safe-sex approach was far more effective in combating the spread of the virus.

In 2006 Pell voiced his opposition to legislation that would allow LGBT couples to adopt children.  

During his time as Archbishop of Melbourne the church was forced to respond to the growing number of cases where clergy had been accused of sexual abuse offences. Under his watch the church launched the Melbourne Response, a protocol for dealing with cases of sexual abuse within the church. He later oversaw a similar process in the Diocese of Sydney.

Pell later faced allegations that earlier in his career he had failed to take action against priests who were accused of sexual abuse. In 2020 the Royal Commission into sexual abuse found that Pell knew about child sexual abuse occurring in the church in the 1970s but failed to take adequate actions to address it. He rejected the finding, saying it was not supported by the evidence.

Pell faced several accusations that he himself was a perpetrator of child sexual abuse. He stood trial on multiple cases with the media banned from reporting the outcomes of some of the cases while others were still in progress.

Following the announcement of his passing social media platforms were swapped with comments highlighting the church leader’s failure to take action against pedophile priests, his history of making anti-LGBTIQA+ comments, and details of the accusations of sexual abuse levelled against him.

OIP Staff

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