George Pell’s sudden death ‘a shock to those close to him’

George Pell was in the recovery room after a hip replacement, chatting with his anaesthetist, when he suffered the fatal cardiac arrest.

George Pell at home. Picture: Victor Sokolowicz

Five days before George Pell was admitted to a Rome hospital for a routine hip replacement surgery, the 81-year-old was one of 125 cardinals concelebrating the funeral of his friend Emeritus Pope Benedict at the Vatican.

Though Cardinal Pell had a long and significant history of heart problems, his death from a sudden cardiac arrest was a shock to those close to him.

Cardinal Pell was in the Salvator Mundi International Hospital, a private facility with 82 beds in the centre of Rome near the Trastevere neighbourhood, for the hip operation.

It was Cardinal Pell’s second hip replacement – the first occurred in Australia – and he was in the recovery room, chatting with his anaesthetist, when he suffered the fatal cardiac arrest.

His biographer Tess Livingstone – a journalist for The Australian – said his death was unexpected.

“Close friends said he was in the best form they had seen him for years, after he emerged from 13 months’ imprisonment,” Livingstone wrote.

Cardinal Pell’s convictions for child sexual abuse were quashed by the High Court in 2020; the sentencing judge had warned he could die in jail.

After he was released from prison in Victoria in April 2020, he returned to Rome in September of that year, but did not go back to his former job, the prefect of the Secretariat of the Economy, regarded as the third most powerful role in the Vatican hierarchy.

Cardinal George Pell arrives at his Vatican apartment on September 30, 2020. He is back in Rome for the first time since he was acquitted of sexual abuse charges in Victoria. Picture: Victor Sokolowicz,

Pope Francis had called Cardinal Pell – a self-described social conservative – to Rome in 2014 to stamp out suspected corruption and run the ruler over the Vatican’s finances.

Cardinal Pell last year said he had identified criminality and incompetence in that role, as well as $1.3bn in Vatican assets that were not properly declared.

Even away from his old job, post-jail, Cardinal Pell was still an influential and busy figure in the Vatican. His final years were spent reading, writing, travelling and mentoring other seminarians and students.

He wrote a three-volume prison journal, published through a San Francisco-based Catholic publishing house, and penned the obituary for Emeritus Pope Benedict published in this newspaper on the final day of last year.

Cardinal Pell wrote that his friend was “a holy and prayerful priest; a Christian gentleman of the old school, who always remained a learned and reserved German professor”.

“He was a good pope, not a great pope, but neither a failure,” Cardinal Pell wrote in his obituary.

In recent weeks, he had been meeting Australian students and American seminarians, and delivering lectures, as well as networking with fellow cardinals as they arrived for Pope Benedict’s funeral.

In May 2021, Cardinal Pell told BBC World Service reporter Colm Flynn – in an interview in his Vatican apartment next to St Peter’s Square – that he had initially not wanted to return to Italy.

“I wasn’t keen to come back,” he said. “When I was in jail, I asked my secretary to pack up my belongings here – especially my books – and send them home. (But) the word came down from on high to leave the apartment here for me when I might return.”

He agreed with Flynn that it was “part of his vindication” to come back to Rome, and said he had met privately with Pope Francis when he returned.

“He was always very supportive, and I am deeply grateful to him for that,” Cardinal Pell said.

Cardinal Pell said he had a “sinking feeling” when he was accused in 2017 of the sexual abuse of choirboys as the Archbishop of Melbourne in 1996 and 1997, and said he was “unusually blessed” to have influential friends to raise millions of dollars for his legal bills.

“I don’t know whether I would rate as the all-time number one enemy of the people, but nonetheless my ratings on that were good,” he said of the public enmity towards him in Australia during his sex abuse prosecution.

On turning 80, Cardinal Pell acknowledged he would lose his right to vote for the next pope at a future conclave of cardinals.

“In a certain sense, you can take the easy option and say it’s one less responsibility,” he told the BBC’s Flynn. “But by the same token, if you’re well, you’re able to attend the nine days of pre-conclave discussions. And if I was well, I’d certainly be keen to participate there.”

Asked what he would say to people who would always believe he was guilty of sexual abuse regardless of the High Court’s decision, Cardinal Pell said: “Find out about the case, if you’re interested in it, study the case. Just find out about the case, and make up your own mind”.