Was Top Vatican Cardinal MURDERED? Former Church Corruption Boss Vows to Uncover the Truth About Death He Claims is 'Shrouded in Mystery'

The former auditor general of the Vatican has raised questions about the death of the cardinal who was handpicked to root out financial corruption inside the Catholic Church, RadarOnline.com has learned.

Libero Milone, a Netherlands-born Italian businessman who held high-ranking positions at Deloitte and who was appointed by Pope Francis to be the first auditor-general of the Vatican in 2015 before being forced to resign in 2017, has vowed to uncover the truth around the demise of Cardinal George Pell.

“At his funeral, at his casket, I promised him that we would seek out the truth,” Milone said.

Cardinal Pell, an Australian, died suddenly in January last year aged 81. He was said to have suffered a cardiac arrest following hip surgery in Rome.

But RadarOnline.com has learned speculation continues to swirl around the death of Australia’s most senior Catholic, who was also found guilty — and then acquitted — of molesting two teenage choirboys while he was archbishop of Melbourne in 1996.

At the center of the death scuttlebutt is the suggestion that Pell, who was placed in charge of the Vatican’s finances in 2014 as the head of the Vatican's Secretariat for the Economy, was on the verge of exposing a series of major crimes inside the four walls of the church.

It’s emerged at least two of Cardinal Pell’s closest confidantes in the church had urged him not to undergo surgery in Rome and instead return home to Australia for the procedure over concerns about his safety and welfare.

While Pell had reportedly also grown worried about his security, he opted to undergo surgery at the Salvator Mundi Hospital, a private hospital in Rome.

But in a new stunning revelation, The Australian newspaper on Tuesday quoted senior sources close to the Vatican that suggested CCTV cameras at Salvator Mundi Hospital were not working at the time of Cardinal Pell’s death.

Pell was reportedly awake and appeared well after the surgery before going into sudden cardiac arrest.

The Australian also reported no medical doctor was on duty the evening the cardinal died.

“Rumours have swirled around the Holy See for months that Pell's body was left in post-autopsy disarray and not been properly dressed sparking further concerns about his last hours,” said the newspaper.

Questions have also centered around why Cardinal Pell, the former archbishop of Melbourne and Sydney, was forced to go to Salvator Mundi Hospital in the first instance; the hospital is 15 minutes away from the luxurious Gemelli Polyclinic Hospital, a facility dubbed “the third Vatican” and typically used for high-profile Catholic leaders.

In another mystery, Cardinal Pell’s casket was not open at his funeral.

Pell’s career came under a cloud in 2018 when a jury convicted him of historic child sex incidents — which he strenuously denied.

Pell spent 404 days behind bars until his conviction was quashed on appeal to the High Court in 2020.

Milone, the only man left alive of the high-powered trio led by Pell who launched Pope Francis’s reforms of the church’s corrupt financial systems, has described the death of Cardinal Pell as being “shrouded in mystery.”

Soon after Pope Francis named Milone the auditor general of the Vatican he began to suspect that his office computer had been tampered with.

According to Milone, the external company he contacted to inspect the computer reported that it had been targeted for unauthorized access and that Milone's secretary's computer had been infected with spyware.

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On June 18, 2017, the Vatican’s gendarmerie — the military police and security force — raided Milone's office and later interrogated him for 12 hours.

He claimed he was intimidated into resigning and signed a resignation letter prepared in advance Archbishop Giovanni Angelo Becciu, then the substitute for general affairs in the Vatican Secretariat of State, a top official who was considered a gatekeeper to Pope Francis.

Cardinal Becciu’s litany of corruption has since emerged. In July 2021, a Vatican judge ordered Becciu and nine others to stand trial on charges of embezzlement, abuse of office, and subornation.

The charges were in connection with an investment in London real estate. Becciu was accused of concealing a $200 million London real estate purchase in violation of accounting while a broker in the deal "openly admitted" blackmailing Becciu.

Becciu's trial was the first criminal trial of a cardinal in a Vatican court and he is currently serving a five-and-a-half year jail sentence

In 2020, prosecutors also accused him of siphoning funds and offering contracts to organisations and charities run by his brother on their native island of Sardinia.

Once himself a papal contender, Cardinal Becciu was considered a nemesis of late Cardinal Pell.