Several dozen people, cardinals, bishops and archbishops, attended the funeral of controversial Australian Cardinal George Pell, who was jailed for sexually abusing two choristers, at St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican on Saturday.

The religious ceremony, which lasted about an hour and a half, was led by the Italian Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, dean of the College of Cardinals, Pope Francis arrived in a wheelchair for the last minutes and for prayer, AFP and Agerpres news agencies reported. .

Cardinal Pell died at the age of 81 on Tuesday in Rome of heart complications following hip surgery.

George Pell was the highest-ranking Catholic Church official to be imprisoned for child sexual abuse. In 2019, he was sentenced to six years in prison and registered as a sex offender.

Pell was accused of abusing two boys while he was Archbishop of Melbourne.

After spending 12 months behind bars, his conviction was eventually overturned by the High Court of Australia.

“It was an experience of great suffering endured with confidence in God’s justice, showing an example of how to accept even unjust punishments with dignity and inner peace,” Cardinal Re said during his homily, calling the deceased “a man of God and man. Church”.

The prime minister of the Australian state of Victoria, where George Pell was born, has however refused to hold a taxpayer-funded public memorial service for the cardinal, saying such a ceremony would be “deeply painful” for the cardinal. victims of sexual violence.

“There will be no memorial service, no state funeral, because I think it will be a very, very painful thing for all the survivors of child sexual abuse by the Catholic Church,” Daniel Andrews told reporters.

According to the Premier of Victoria, Cardinal Pell’s legacy has been permanently tarnished.