Monica Hingston at the 2019 Australian LGBTI Awards Photo: 2019 Getty Images
In 2004 former nun Monica Hingston took a stand against her second cousin Cardinal George Pell, by making public a letter urging him to reconsider his support of the Vatican's declaration that homosexuals were "seriously depraved persons".
Hingston was in a long-term relationship with Peg Moran who she had fallen in love with while they were both serving as nuns in a Chilean shantytown during the rule of Augusto Pinochet. Their love inspired the very private woman to publicly out herself in support of catholic homosexuals facing oppression from their church.
In March of this year Cardinal George Pell was sentenced to six years in jail for sexually abusing two choirboys when he was archbishop of Melbourne in the 1990s.
Monica Hingston has recently been presented with the Faith award at the Australian LGBTI Awards to honour her activism.
