[To see our complete list of accused bishops, click here.]
Auxiliary bishop of Melbourne 1987-1996; archbishop of Melbourne 1996-2001; archbishop of Sydney 2001-2014; elevated to cardinal 2003; Prefect of the Secretariat of the Economy 2014-2018. Retired October 2018, age 77. Died January 10, 2023.
Summary: Cardinal George Pell was publicly accused of sexually abusing at least eleven boys. In December 2018, he was criminally convicted of sexual offenses against two 13-year-old choirboys, but in April 2020, after serving thirteen months in prison, he was acquitted by Australia’s High Court. At least one other victim received a six-figure settlement in a civil case, and at least two others were granted compensation by the National Redress Scheme, which deemed their abuse allegations “reasonably likely.” Pell maintained his innocence of all claims of abuse until his death in early 2023.
Background
[For more information, see our detailed timeline.]
On 12/11/2018, Pell was convicted of one charge of sexual penetration of a child under age 16 and of four charges of committing an indecent act with or in the presence of a child under age 16. The alleged victims were two 13-year-old boys, dubbed J and R by the court. As detailed in the trial judge’s subsequent Reasons for Sentence, the cardinal was found guilty of perpetrating the crime of sexual penetration on victim J, two indecent acts with J, and one indecent act with R during an encounter with both boys in late 1996, likely December. The incidents reportedly occurred following Pell’s celebration of Sunday Solemn Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne, when Pell was Melbourne archbishop. The fourth “indecent act” charge related to Pell’s groping of J’s genitals several weeks later, possibly in February 1997. (Note: R never reported his abuse, and he told his mother that he had never been abused. Nor did he participate in this case: he died of a heroin overdose in April 2014, before the allegations were reported to police. Police learned of R’s alleged abuse in June-July 2015 from J, who reported that he and R were together when they were allegedly assaulted by Pell.)
On 3/13/2019, Pell was sentenced to six years in prison, with possibility of parole after three years, eight months. [See Judge Peter Kidd’s Reasons for Sentence.]
In early June 2019, Pell appealed the verdict to the Melbourne Court of Appeals, a division of the Supreme Court of Victoria. On 8/21/2019, the three-justice appeal panel announced it had dismissed Pell’s appeal 2 to 1. [See the Melbourne Court of Appeal’s Summary of Judgment and Reasons for Judgment, which includes the dissenting judge’s opinion, beginning on page 121.]
The cardinal appealed the ruling to Australia’s High Court, his defense counsel arguing that the appeal court’s judgment had “reversed the onus of proof.” In a brief but complicated ruling on 11/13/ 2019, a two-justice High Court panel neither granted nor denied Pell’s application for appeal. Instead, it ordered that both Pell’s request for appeal and his substantive argument for appeal be heard in a special sitting of the full bench.
In January and February 2020, both Pell’s defense counsel and prosecutors submitted written arguments to the High Court. The High Court’s full bench of seven justices held its hearing on 3/11 and 3/12/2020, with Pell’s counsel presenting its case first, followed by the prosecutor’s argument for retaining the appeal court’s ruling. The High Court then asked for further written submissions from both sides.
On 4/7/2020, the High Court issued its judgment. It unanimously allowed the appeal and “ordered that the convictions be quashed and that verdicts of acquittal be entered in their place.” Granting that the jury had assessed the complainant’s evidence “as thoroughly credible and reliable,” the Court wrote, “the evidence of the opportunity witnesses nonetheless required the jury, acting rationally, to have entertained a reasonable doubt” as to Pell’s guilt. Pell was immediately freed from prison. A brief Vatican communique ‘welcomed’ the High Court decision. It did not say whether it would now launch an internal investigation of the cardinal.
Lawsuit brought by father of “R”
While the High Court ruling ended the criminal case involving the two teen choirboys, it did not preclude the possibility that the allegations could be considered in civil courts. In July 2022, the father of “R,” the alleged victim who died in 2014, filed a lawsuit against George Pell and the archdiocese of Melbourne, claiming that the alleged abuse of his son had caused him nervous shock and other psychological injuries. In August 2022, Victoria’s supreme court rejected the church’s argument that the lawsuit should be dismissed [see ruling]. The judge ruled that the father’s status as a secondary victim gave him standing and that “legislation passed in 2018 that was designed to prevent unincorporated organisations – such as religious organisations – from relying on a legal technicality to avoid civil lawsuits applied to the father’s case.” The church’s appeals were denied by Victoria’s Court of Appeals in August 2023, and subsequently by Australia’s High Court, which ruled in February 2024 that the lawsuit could proceed. In May 2025, the father and the Melbourne archdiocese settled the case “without the court ruling on the allegations against Pell.” (Note: We could find very little information on this May 2025 settlement; this Herald Sun piece appears to be the only news coverage accessible online.)
Sexual abuse allegations by nine others against Pell. At least two are known to have been granted compensation by the National Redress Scheme.
In addition to the alleged crimes for which he was put on trial, Pell was accused of child sexual abuse by at least nine others, several of whom reported similar accounts of Pell groping or fondling their genitals and anuses during horseplay while swimming. One man reported his complaint to the church in 2002 [see the report on the allegation by the church-commissioned investigator]. Two others, Lyndon Monument and Damian Dignan, told Victoria police in 2015 or 2016 that then-Father Pell repeatedly molested them in a Ballarat’s Eureka swimming pool in the 1970s. In 2016, following the Australian Broadcast Corporation’s airing of its 7.30 program on Pell, a complainant named Michael Breen contacted reporter Louise Milligan. He told her he was age 12 or 13 in roughly 1976 when Pell allegedly fondled his groin and anus underwater while they were playing in the Eureka Pool. Milligan wrote that she was the first person he had told and that she directed him to Taskforce SANO. See related excerpt from Milligan’s book (2017 edition), Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of George Pell.
On 4/2/2020, two other alleged victims, “Bernie” and Peter Clarke, appeared in an Australian Broadcasting Corporation TV program. Both said they were molested by Pell in the 1970s, when they were growing up in Ballarat’s Nazareth House, an orphanage run by the Sisters of Nazareth.
On 4/7/2021, the church settled a civil case for AU $350,000 with a victim alleging repeated sexual abuse by Christian Brother Gerald Fitzgerald, a notorious abuser, and by Pell, who he accused of groping him in Ballarat’s Eureka pool in the summer of 1977 or 1978, when he was age ten or eleven. The Christian Brothers apologized to the victim; the diocese of Ballarat, the other church entity held liable in the case, did not.
In August 2022, Victoria’s Supreme Court ruled against the church’s request to dismiss a lawsuit against Pell and the Melbourne archdiocese brought by the father of choirboy “R,” the alleged victim who died of a heroin overdose.
The National Redress Scheme, whose standard of proof is “reasonable likelihood,” as opposed to the criminal standard, “beyond a reasonable doubt,” has awarded compensation to two additional Pell victims. [See how the Scheme defines “reasonable likelihood.”]
In December 2022, the Scheme notified “David” that it was giving him AU $45,000 as compensation for his abuse by Pell and a Christian Brother in Ballarat. The alleged abuse by Pell occurred in 1975, when David was an eight-year-old in Year 3 at Ballarat’s St. Patrick’s Primary School. He was in the YMCA swimming pool in Ballarat, when Pell groped the boy’s genitals while tossing him into the air.
In August 2024, the decision-makers for the Scheme notified “James” that he would be receiving AU $95,000 in response to James’ report of anal rape by Pell in the 1970s. In a longform article published in February 2025 by the Australian news outlet The Monthly, journalist Louise Milligan reported that the assault occurred when James was around nine years old, in Year 4, at Ballarat’s St. Francis Xavier School, and then-Father Pell coached the school’s football team. James stole Pell’s cardigan one day, and Pell chased him into the school’s empty gymnasium. According to the written complaint James filed with the National Redress Scheme, Pell put the boy onto a small trampoline, ordered him to drop his pants, and then inserted something in the boy’s anus.
For a detailed chronology, see: Timeline of the Allegations and the Prosecution Faced by George Pell