Australian Cardinal George Pell (Image: AAP/AP/Andrew Medichini)
Australian Cardinal George Pell (Image: AAP/AP/Andrew Medichini)

Reactions to the death of Cardinal George Pell suggest Australia’s highest-ranked Catholic is set to be as polarising in death as he was in life.

Crikey has confirmed that Pell, who rose from the priesthood in Victoria to the highest echelons of the Catholic Church at the Vatican, is dead. He was 81.

The Vatican has reported the former Catholic archbishop of Melbourne and Sydney died on Tuesday evening following complications “from a hip replacement surgery” he had undergone earlier that day.

Pell returned to the Vatican in September 2020 after child sexual abuse convictions were quashed in the High Court of Australia. A royal commission later found that Pell knew about child sexual abuse by clergy but did not do enough to address it. Pell denied those findings and said they were “not supported by evidence”, the BBC reported in 2020.

A former prime minister, Tony Abbott, said in a statement that Pell had been a “saint for our times”: “His incarceration on charges that the High Court ultimately scathingly dismissed was a modern form of crucifixion; reputationally at least a kind of living death …

“Like everyone who knew him I feel a deep sense of loss but am confident that his reputation will grow and grow.”

Public service journalism Walkley winner Nina Funnell, who has reported extensively on sexual abuse and has advocated for victims, tweeted that her thoughts were with survivors.

“Today I remember every victim and survivor of child sexual abuse who was harmed by him & every paedophile he covered for,” she tweeted. 

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said: “For many people, particularly of the Catholic faith, this will be a difficult day and I express my condolences to all those who are mourning today.”

Pell was ordained in 1966 and appointed archbishop of Melbourne in 1996. Five years later he was made archbishop of Sydney. In 2003 he was appointed cardinal by Pope John Paul II, and he became the Vatican’s treasurer in 2014. 

He was charged in 2017 with multiple child sexual abuse offences that were alleged to have happened in the 1970s and ’90s. After being convicted in 2018, the conviction was overturned in 2020.