Cardinal George Pell has been remembered as a person who skilled nice struggling at a requiem mass at St Peter’s Basilica in Rome, the place Pope Francis gave the ultimate blessing.
Cardinal Pell was farewelled on Saturday on the Vatican in the identical church the place he was ordained in 1966 and the place Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s funeral was held earlier this month.
Probably the most senior Australian member of the Catholic Church, Cardinal Pell died in Rome on January 10 on the age of 81 from coronary heart issues following hip surgical procedure.
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The mass was led by an Italian cardinal, Giovanni Battista Re, in his function as Dean of the Faculty of Cardinals, earlier than the ultimate blessing, delivered in Latin, was recited by Pope Francis.
Cardinal Pell was the Vatican’s high finance minister earlier than stepping down in 2017 to face trial in Melbourne on youngster sexual abuse costs, for which he was jailed for greater than 400 days earlier than his conviction was overturned by the Excessive Court docket in 2020.
Cardinal Re mentioned his later years had been marked by “an unjust and painful condemnation”.
“His was an expertise of nice struggling endured with confidence in God’s judgment,” he mentioned.
Cardinal Re mentioned Cardinal Pell was a “man of God and man of the Church characterised by a deep religion and nice steadfastness of doctrine, which he at all times defended with out hesitation and with braveness, involved solely with being devoted to Christ.”
Quickly after Cardinal Pell’s loss of life, it was revealed that the cardinal was the creator of a memo that had been circulating within the Vatican for months. The memo lamented that the present papacy was a “catastrophe” and a “disaster.”
Cardinal Pell’s funeral in Rome got here 9 days after he attended former pope Benedict’s farewell when, the Archbishop of Sydney Anthony Fisher mentioned, he was “in glowing kind – witty and sensible”.
After the mass, Australian officers had been on account of accumulate his coffin to return his stays to Australia.
He shall be buried within the crypt at St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney, the place he served as archbishop, this week.
NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet and Victoria’s Daniel Andrews have dominated out holding state providers for the previous archbishop of Melbourne and Sydney.
A consultant for the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney mentioned plenty could be devoted to Cardinal Pell on Sunday.
