Pell returned to Australia from the Vatican in 2017 to fight abuse allegations made by multiple complainants over decades in his home state of Victoria. Only charges that he abused two choirboys in his early months as archbishop of Melbourne in the late 1990s led to convictions.
His first trial ended with a deadlocked jury, but he was convicted after his second trial with a unanimous verdict. He lost his first appeal in a 2-to-1 ruling but was acquitted by all seven High Court judges.
He had spent more than a year in prison, mostly in solitary confinement, before he was cleared. But his Vatican career by then had ended.
Pope Francis, who in 2014 appointed Pell to be the first prefect of the newly created Secretariat for the Economy tasked with reforming the Vatican’s notoriously opaque finances, sent a message to the funeral that said Australia’s most senior Catholic had “laid the foundations with determination and wisdom” of the Vatican’s economic reforms.
Former conservative Prime Ministers John Howard and Tony Abbott were among the mourners at the cathedral, while the current center-left prime minister, Anthony Albanese, was represented by a government minister.
Sydney-based gay rights group Community Action for Rainbow Rights had called for people to join what it calls its “Pell go to Hell!” protest outside the cathedral.
Pell had riled gay activists with views including: “Homosexual activity is a much greater health hazard than smoking.”
Pell was archbishop of Sydney from 2001 until 2014, when he was called to the Vatican.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
