Australian Cardinal George Pell, a leading Roman Catholic conservative, died on Tuesday aged 81 in Rome.
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"It is with deep sadness that I can confirm His Eminence, George Cardinal Pell, passed away in Rome in the early hours of this morning," Australian Archbishop Anthony Fisher said in a statement.
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Before a global sex-abuse scandal, Pell was widely seen as the right-hand man of Pope Francis and the third most powerful figure in the church.
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Pell was imprisoned in 2019 after he was found guilty of sexually abusing two 13-year-old choirboys in the 1990s.
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He spent 12 months in Barwon Prison near Melbourne before the Australian High Court quashed his convictions following an appeal.
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The ruling allowed the then-78-year-old Pell to walk free, ending the case of the most senior figure accused in the global scandal of historical sex abuse that has rocked the Roman Catholic Church worldwide.
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Born in a small regional town in the state of Victoria, Pell climbed higher in the Catholic Church than any other Australian before him.
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Pell, a former archbishop of Melbourne and Sydney, served in the Vatican as economy minister from 2014 until he took a leave of absence in 2017 to return to Australia to face the charges.
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He had been living in Rome since his acquittal in 2020.
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