Vatican City: The Vatican announced that Pope Francis will give a final farewell to Cardinal George Pell during the funeral.
Cardinal Giovanni Battista Rey, dean of the College of Cardinals, will attend Pell's funeral in St Peter's Basilica, the Vatican announced on Thursday. Francis will deliver the final remarks and salute, as is customary for cardinal funerals.
Pell served as Francis' first finance minister for three years before returning to Australia to face child sex abuse allegations. Pell died in a Rome hospital on Tuesday from heart complications following hip surgery. He was 81 years old.
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In the years following allegations of molestation involving two singers while serving as Archbishop of Melbourne in 2020, he was dividing his time between Rome and Sydney. After serving 404 days in solitary confinement, Pell was released after the High Court of Australia overturned an earlier court sentence.
During his tenure as prefect of the Holy See's Secretariat for the Economy, which was established by Francis to try to gain control of the Vatican's murky finances, Pell repeatedly clashed with the Italian bureaucracy.
In his condolence message, Francis thanked Pell for laying the foundation for the current reforms, which include requiring Vatican offices to comply with international standards for accounting and budgeting.
But Pell, an ardent conservative, became increasingly pessimistic about Francis' course of papacy, especially with regard to the church's future emphasis on involving and voting the laity.
He wrote a remarkable memo that was circulated last spring and posted on the Vatican blog Settimo Cielo under the pseudonym "Demos", outlining his concerns and suggestions for the next pope at future conclaves .
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The memo, an extraordinary indictment of the current pontificate by a former close Francis aide, was written by Pell, blogger Sandro Magister revealed on Wednesday.
The memo, which is divided into two sections titled "The Vatican Today" and "The Next Conclave", outlines a number of issues, including Francis' "weak" preaching of the Gospel, the Holy See's precarious financial situation and the "lack of Is. of the Vatican. Is. "Respect for the law" in the city-state, including the ongoing financial corruption trial, which Pell himself supported.
Pell wrote, according to the commentators of each school, the episcopate is in many or most respects a disaster.
A signed article that Pell reportedly wrote in the days before his death was published by the conservative publication The Spectator on Wednesday.
Pell called Francis' two-year survey of Catholic laymen on topics such as church teaching on sexuality and women's roles, which is expected to come up at a meeting of bishops in October, a "toxic nightmare" in an article.
According to Pell, who was referring to a summary of the Vatican's outreach effort, "there is a deep confusion, an assault on traditional morality and the insertion of neo-Marxist jargon about exclusion, alienation, identity, marginalization, LGBTQ conversations. as well as the displacement of Christian concepts of forgiveness, sin, sacrifice, healing and redemption.
However, Pell's anonymous memo is even harsher and specifically targets Francis. Pell went ahead and devoted an entire section to the Pope's involvement in a significant financial fraud investigation that resulted in the prosecution of 10 people, including Pell's former adversary, Cardinal Angelo Baccio. While other conservatives have criticized Francis' action over conservatives and mercy-over-ethical priorities, Pell went ahead.
The indictment, which resulted in the Vatican investing 350 million euros in a real estate deal in London, was initially welcomed by Pell as it validated his years of efforts to expose financial mismanagement and corruption in the Holy See.
However, during the trial, troubling concerns have been raised about the rights of defendants in a system of law where Francis has absolute authority.
Pell noted that Francis had issued four secret orders without any right of appeal during the investigation "to help the prosecution". The defense has claimed that the verdict violated the human rights of the suspects.
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Pell also spoke up for Bassiu, who was fired in September 2020 before becoming the subject of an investigation by Francis. "He was not given a fair trial.
According to Pell, who holds this issue close to his heart because of personal experiences, everyone has a right to due process. According to Pell, the Vatican's disregard for the law "risks becoming an international scandal."