Cardinal George Pell had a broken nose, was not wearing shoes and his clothes had been “just thrown in” the coffin when his body was returned to Australia from Italy last year, according to new claims which suggest the Vatican “had not forgiven Pell for hunting down corruption”.
Australia’s most senior Catholic died in Rome on January 10 last year, after going into cardiac arrest at the Salvator Mundi Hospital while recovering from a routine hip replacement operation hours earlier.
Following an autopsy, the 81-year-old was repatriated to Australia where his funeral mass was celebrated at St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney on February 1.
According to a report in The Australian on Tuesday detailing efforts to hunt down financial corruption in the Vatican, led by Cardinal Pell prior to his return to Australia in 2017 to face historical child sexual abuse allegations, “rumours had been swirling around the Vatican about Pell’s death and the state of his body post-autopsy”.
“His funeral was held in St Peter’s Basilica four days after his death, with Pope Francis presiding over the rite of final commendation and farewell,” the report said.
“The fact that the cardinal’s casket was closed and did not allow for the traditional farewell touch or kiss by mourners raised eyebrows among many at the mass.”
Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt on Wednesday shared new alleged details after speaking with Cardinal Pell’s brother David Pell.
“For a year I’ve kept a secret that infuriated me about the death last year of Cardinal George Pell — the final insult to a great and innocent man,” Bolt wrote.
“I’d promised not to reveal it to spare Pell’s grieving family.”
Bolt said the reference in The Australian article, and a call to David Pell, “leaves me now free to say what I learned — or most of it”.
“I don’t buy conspiracy theories about Pell’s death, but I do know about the state of his body after the Vatican sent it to Australia for burial,” he wrote.
“The body had been treated with gross disrespect. Perhaps it was incompetence, but some of Pell’s closest associates told me they suspect it could be a sign that some in the Vatican had not forgiven Pell for hunting down corruption.”
Cardinal Pell’s embalming had been “mucked up”, David Pell told Bolt, and the undertaker in Sydney had to clean the body.
“Pell’s nose was also broken,” Bolt wrote. “I’ll leave out some other details.”
He added that Pell was shoeless and his “clothes had been just thrown in the coffin”.
“The Vatican should be ashamed to have treated his body so shabbily,” he wrote.
“Pell once told me he did not feel safe in the Vatican as he chased the crooks, some since sentenced to jail. What was done to him after death makes me suspect he was right.”
The Vatican press office has been contacted for comment on the allegations.
Cardinal Pell had returned to the Vatican in September 2020 after successfully overturning his convictions for child sex offences.
In April 2020, the High Court of Australia unanimously quashed Cardinal Pell’s 2018 convictions for allegedly sexually abusing two choir boys in Melbourne in the late ‘90s, finding that the Victorian jury, acting rationally on the whole of the evidence, ought to have entertained a reasonable doubt as to his guilt.
The full bench of the High Court found there was “a significant possibility that an innocent person” had been convicted “because the evidence did not establish guilt to the requisite standard of proof”.
Cardinal Pell always maintained his innocence and said after the acquittal he felt the “serious injustice” had been “remedied”.
He spent 13 months in Victoria’s Barwon Prison from March 2019 to April 2020.
Speaking to the BBC in 2021, he opened up about his experience behind bars, saying it was the “humiliating” strip searches he hated the most.
“Jail is undignified, you’re at the bottom of the pit, you’re humiliated, but by and large I was treated decently,” he said.
“The worst single thing I think were the strip searches, the brief humiliating, the ignominy of it is probably the worst of it. I wasn’t too uncomfortable, a firm base for a bed, a hot shower and that’s very important to Australians, the food, there was too much of it.”
Cardinal Pell admitted he was “pretty ordinary” spiritually and at times he thought he may have to wait until the afterlife to be vindicated.
“If you believe there is a God, if you believe that ultimately all things will be well, that ultimately in the afterlife there will be peace and harmony and justice, if you really believe that, [it doesn’t] matter what terrible thing might happen to you here,” he said.
“It is still terrible but it’s not like a Greek tragedy where for the Greeks there was no afterlife, there’s no possibility of fixing it up, that’s not a Christian perspective. I was always absolutely determined to fight [the allegations] because I was innocent … and to work hard to get the truth out. I think the good Lord realised spiritually I’m pretty ordinary so I wasn’t subjected, I wasn’t tempted to despair, I never felt I was on the edge of an abyss, I always realised that God was active.”
He was the former financial controller of the Vatican and was the most senior Catholic in the world to have been found guilty of historical child sexual abuse before his acquittal.
Cardinal Pell told the BBC he wasn’t keen to return to Rome but Pope Francis refused to let his apartment be packed up.
“I miss my family and friends, I’ve got a very good circle of friends in Sydney but I’m in contact with them regularly,” he said.
“I wasn’t keen to come back [to Rome]. When I was in jail I asked my secretary to pack up my belongings here, especially my books and send them home. The word came down from on high to leave the apartment here for me when I might return.”
Cardinal Pell said Pope Francis had always been “very supportive” of him, for which he was “deeply grateful”.
According to The Australian, at least two of Cardinal Pell’s close friends in Rome had urged him to consider returning to Australia for the surgery amid concerns for his safety.
Ten months after his death, nine Vatican officials were convicted of crimes including fraud, abuse of office and money laundering following a major two-and-a-half year investigation.
Cardinal Angelo Becciu, a former adviser to Pope Francis who was once considered a papal contender, was the most senior clergyman in the Catholic Church to ever face a Vatican criminal court.
He was convicted of embezzlement and fraud and sentenced to five-and-a-half years in jail. Cardinal Becciu is appealing his conviction and remains free.
frank.chung@news.com.au