Australian media in Rome to cover Cardinal George Pell’s appearance before the Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse via video link have allegedly been shoved, punched, and otherwise treated with heavy-handed tactics by members of Cardinal Pell’s security team.
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There were scuffles between security guards and journalists when Pell arrived at the Rome hotel a few hours before the hearing began at 10pm (Italian time) on Sunday.
His colleague Hugh Whitfeld tweeted similar: So not a *great* start, then.
When Cardinal Pell was asked if he was critical of Bishop Mulkearns’ conduct, the Cardinal said the bishop’s handling of paedophile Gerald Risdale was “a catastrophe”. Gerald Ridsdale is in prison after being convicted of multiple abuse charges.
“Let me just say this, as an initial clarification, and that is I’m not here to defend the indefensible”, he said after swearing on the Bible to tell the truth.
“Unfortunately, original sin is alive and well”, Pell said.
“He is in a position of great power and a symbol of a hierarchy and a system of power which to many repeatedly failed them and continues to do so with perceived hollow apologies, lack of contrition but more so, no real accountability”, she said in an email.
Despite admitting he was the link between parents and the church during his time in Ballarat, the Cardinal said he could not recall having sexual abuse being ever reported to him. The alleged events took place in the 1970s and 1980s when Pell was a priest in Australia.
“We’re here to seek the truth. And it all stems from that abuse”.
Associate editor John L. Allen, Jr. also questioned why prevention strategies – drafted by Pope Francis’s Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors in response to a sex abuse crisis that has shaken the Church over the past two decades – were not part of new bishops’ training… “Actions are another”, he said, in calling for a church-funded compensation scheme that addresses the fact that many survivors are so traumatized by their abuse that they can not support themselves financially.
The commission’s current hearings relate to Ballarat and how the Melbourne archdiocese responded to allegations of abuse, including when Cardinal Pell served as an auxiliary bishop.
Pell was fiercely critical of Bishop Ronald Mulkearns, the former bishop of Ballarat who gave evidence last week to the committee last week.
Cardinal Pell said he had no knowledge that Bishop Mulkearns had sent Gerald Risdale away for “treatment” after his paedophilia was discovered.
Giving evidence in front of abuse victims in a Rome hotel room, Pell told Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Response to Child Sexual Abuse that children were often not believed and abusive priests shuffled from parish to parish.
“It’s early days but they’re very controlled answers, there seems to be lots of references of memory problems before any memory problems being raised”, he said.
A group of child abuse victims and their families were in the same room as Pell to watch him give his evidence.
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He said he had tied a yellow ribbon on the fence in the Our Lady of Lourdes Grotto in the Vatican Gardens in a show of solidarity with the “Loud Fence” movement launched in Ballarat to support survivors of abuse.
