ROME • Cardinal George Pell, who was the most senior Catholic cleric to be convicted of child sex abuse and spent 404 days in solitary confinement in his native Australia only to have his convictions overturned, died Tuesday. He was 81.

Pell died after undergoing hip surgery at Rome’s Salvator Mundi hospital, said a friend, Rev. Robert McCulloch, a Rome-base priest. He had been in Rome to attend the funeral last week of Pope Benedict XVI.

Pell, an Australian, was once the third-highest ranked Catholic in the Vatican after earlier serving as the Archbishop of Melbourne and Archbishop of Sydney.

Pope Francis brought Pell to the Vatican in February 2014 to reform its finances as the first prefect of the newly created Secretariat for the Economy. But Pell returned to his native Australia in 2017 in an attempt to clear his name of child sex charges.

A Victoria state County Court jury convicted him of molesting two 13-year-old choirboys at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in the latest 1990s shortly after he had become Archbishop of Melbourne.

Pell served 404 days in solitary confinement before the full-bench of the High Court unanimously overturned his convictions in 2020. But his career in the Vatican was effectively over.

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Brazil: Protesters demand jail for rioters

RIO DE JANEIRO • “No amnesty! No amnesty! No amnesty!”

The chant reverberated off the walls of the jam-packed hall at the University of Sao Paulo’s law college Monday afternoon. Within hours, it was the rallying cry for thousands of Brazilians who streamed into the streets of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, penned on protest posters and banners.

The words are a demand for retribution against the supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro who stormed Brazil’s capital Sunday, and those who enabled the rampage.

“These people need to be punished, the people who ordered it need to be punished, those who gave money for it need to be punished,” Bety Amin, a 61-year-old therapist, said on Sao Paulo’s main boulevard.

The word “DEMOCRACY” stretched across the back of her shirt. “They don’t represent Brazil. We represent Brazil.”

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