George Pell Biography, Cause of Death, Age, Net Worth, Wife, Wikipedia, Height, Family
Australia’s colossus of conservative Catholicism, Cardinal George Pell has died, aged 81.
What Happened to George Pell?
Archbishop of Melbourne Peter Comensoli said Pell died from heart complications following hip surgery. “With great sadness, the news is out that Cardinal George Pell died a few hours ago, from heart complications following hip surgery,” he said.
“May eternal light now be his, who so steadfastly believed in the God of Jesus Christ?” His death came a few days after he attended the funeral of former pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican.
George Pell Cause of Death
George Pell died of cardiac arrest at Salvator Mundi hospital in Rome following surgery to his hip on 10 January 2023, at the age of 81. Plans were made to return Pell’s remains to Australia and bury him at the St. Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney following his Vatican funeral.
He was suffering from many health issues in the past years. He had been chatting to the anesthetist in the hospital following the procedure when he suddenly went into cardiac arrest as per the reports.
George Pell Illness
Pell developed cardiac issues in January 2010 when visiting the Vatican, and in February a pacemaker was implanted in his chest in a hospital in Rome. He was unable to fly from Italy to Australia in 2015 because his doctors determined that his heart condition was too severe for him to testify before the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
In February 2016, he was anticipated to be healthy enough to travel. However, based on a two-page medical assessment provided by Pell’s attorneys, commission chair Justice Peter McClellan disallowed him from testifying in person. He gave his testimony via video link from a hotel in Rome. He underwent knee surgery in December of last year. By June 2019, he had healed enough to stop needing a cane.
In February 2019, when he was taken into custody following his conviction, an assessment of his mental and physical health concluded he was healthy enough to be kept in HM Melbourne Assessment Prison.
George Pell Early Career
In his early years as a priest, Pell served in Swan Hill, Ballarat, and Melbourne. Gerald Ridsdale, a known child molester, was someone he encountered during his 1973 stint at the St. Alipius presbytery in Ballarat East.
For the three-decades-long sexual assaults on more than 71 children, that former Catholic priest is still in jail. When Ridsdale entered a guilty plea to 13 additional charges connected to the assault of two boys in 1981 and 1982, the most recent ones became public in October 2022.
He has served 39 years of his complete sentence for offenses committed over a long period. Pell consistently denied being aware of Ridsdale abusing minors in the 1970s.
George Pell Social Issues
Cardinal George Pell rose from a childhood in country Victoria to become one of the most senior Catholic clerics in the world before sex assault allegations embroiled him in multiple court cases.
A divisive figure, Pell had spent the final years of his life living in the Archdiocese of Sydney – over which he once presided as the Archbishop of Sydney – following the High Court’s unanimous quashing of his conviction for child sex offenses in April 2020.
Australia’s most senior Catholic cleric had always maintained his innocence, despite being found guilty by a jury on December 11, 2018, of the 1996 rape of a 13-year-old choirboy and sexual assault of another at St Patrick’s Cathedral, while he was Archbishop of Melbourne.
He had been sentenced to six years, with a minimum of three years and eight months. In 2020, the conviction was overturned by the High Court, and he was released from prison.
George Pell Net Worth
George Pell has an estimated Net Worth of $1 million USD.