Child sex scandal-tainted Australian Cardinal George Pell dies aged 81
- Pell spent 404 days in solitary confinement in his native Australia before his convictions for child sex abuse were overturned
- Even after he was acquitted, his reputation remained tarnished by the scandal. He died on Tuesday in Rome after undergoing hip surgery
Pell suffered fatal heart complications following hip surgery, said Archbishop Peter Comensoli, Pell’s successor as archbishop of Melbourne. Pell had been in Rome to attend the funeral last week of Pope Benedict XVI.
“This news comes as a great shock to all of us,” Sydney Catholic Archbishop Anthony Fisher said in a statement on Facebook. “Please pray for the repose of the soul of Cardinal Pell, for comfort and consolation for his family and for all of those who loved him and are grieving him at this time.”
Pell, the former archbishop of Melbourne and Sydney, became the third-highest ranked official in the Vatican after Pope Francis tapped him in 2014 to reform the Vatican’s notoriously opaque finances as the Holy See’s first-ever finance tsar.
He spent three years as prefect of the newly created Secretariat for the Economy, where he tried to impose international budgeting, accounting and transparency standards.
