George Pell

George Pell (8 June 1941 – 10 January 2023) was an Australian cardinal of the Catholic Church. In 2018, Pell was convicted of child sexual abuse, before the convictions were unanimously quashed on appeal by the High Court of Australia in 2020. Between conviction and acquittal, Pell served more than a year in prison, much of it in solitary confinement. In January 2025 it was announced that the Australian National Redress Scheme, a non-judicial program, had accepted that Pell abused two boys in Ballarat in the 1970s, with compensation paid to one of the boys five weeks prior to Pell's death. According to findings released by Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in 2020, Pell knew of child sexual abuse by clergy by the 1970s but did not take adequate action to address it. Pell said he was "surprised" and that the royal commission's findings "are not supported by evidence".

Ordained a priest in 1966 and bishop in 1987, Pell was made a cardinal in 2003. He worked as a priest in rural Victoria and in Melbourne and also chaired the aid organisation Caritas Australia from 1988 to 1997. Pell served as the eighth Archbishop of Sydney (2001–2014), the seventh Archbishop of Melbourne (1996–2001) and an auxiliary bishop of Melbourne (1987–1996). He served as the inaugural prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy at the Vatican from 2014 to 2019 and a member of the Council of Cardinal Advisers from 2013 to 2018.