But the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse also allowed Australian victims of priests to fly to Rome to sit in with Pell as he gave evidence to judges who were in Sydney.
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Another abuse survivor David Ridsdale, the priest’s nephew, who watched the hearings from Rome said Pell’s testimony of not being interested in Ridsdale’s abusing was also hard for him.
Pell, the pope’s chief financial adviser, told the royal commission in three days of evidence this week that he was deceived twice by church authorities about child abuse allegations against priests Gerald Ridsdale and Peter Searson.
Survivors hugged and shed tears at the end of Cardinal Pell’s testimony to the child abuse Royal Commission outside the Quirinale Hotel in the Italian capital early on Thursday morning.
The group first hung colored ribbons on a fence outside a Catholic school in the rural town of Ballarat, where abuse was rife, with the bright colors created to give a voice to child victims who were silenced.
In Australia, the front page of the Herald Sun newspaper printed a full page photo of Pell leaving the hearing with the headline “See no evil, hear no evil, stop no evil”.
The royal commission – which is Australia’s highest form of investigation – is investigating how Pell dealt with abuse allegations as a priest, educator and adviser to Mulkearns, as well as how the Melbourne archdiocese responded to allegations of abuse, including when Pell served as auxiliary bishop.
The minutes of the meeting mention the bishop “advised it had become necessary” to move Ridsdale from the Ballarat parish of Mortlake. “It’s a sad story and it wasn’t of much interest to me”.
Dowlan, who changed his name to Bales in 2011, was sentenced to six years in prison last year for abusing 20 young boys.
“We work within a framework of Christian moral teaching, or certainly we should, and discussion of the secret faults of others is not encouraged”, Pell said.
Cardinal George Pell will meet privately with survivors of sexual abuse in Rome on Thursday, and has offered to assist victims in meeting Pope Francis, according to an official statement issued by his office on Wednesday.
Was told fleeting references about Dowlan “touching boys” which Cardinal Pell said was “misbehaviour by Dowlan which I concluded might have been pedophilic activity”.
In a moment of frustration, Pell said “you can’t wave a magic wand and correct the situation easily in every situation”.
Pell’s evidence, which adds to testimony from nearly 5,000 survivors according to Commissioner Peter McClellan, has received wide coverage in Australia.
Cardinal George Pell discussed Gerald Ridsdale in 1982.
No surprises, then, when he consistently distanced himself and the Catholic Church from the handful of aberrant church officials who he blamed for covering up child abuse in Ballarat and Melbourne.
Relentless questioning from a succession of lawyers representing abuse victims on Thursday sought to establish that abuse and paedophilia by priests in Ballarat was “common knowledge” across the diocese, particularly among the Catholic community, and that Pell must, or should, have known, particularly in his role as his episcopal vicar for education in the diocese.
“I would say that in the light of my present understanding, …”
The inquiry heard David Ridsdale did not initially want to get the police involved because his grandmother would find out about his uncle’s actions.
“No. One, I didn’t know exactly what he was accused of but… more than 40 years ago I… did not think that was unusual or inappropriate”, Pell replied.
“It is a baseless allegation”, Pell insisted.
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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.
