Pell denied there was any discussion of Ridsdale being a pedophile at a meeting he attended in 1982 where it was discussed that Ridsdale should be moved to another parish.
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Australian Cardinal George Pell insisted he was telling the truth, testifying to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that he had changed a culture of “crimes and cover-ups” within the Catholic Church.
“Unfortunately, I would have to say that I can’t nominate another bishop whose actions are so grave and inexplicable”, Pell said.
“If they’d asked my opinion I would have given it”, he said. “I eventually inquired with the school chaplain”.
Pell admitted that in 1974 a St Patrick’s schoolboy approached him with allegations about Brother Ted Dowlan, a teacher at the school.
Tried on several occasions between 1993 and 2013, Mr Ridsdale has been convicted of 138 offences against more than 50 victims.
“I’m not here to defend the indefensible”, Pell said.
In Sydney, victims’ supporters gathered outside the Commission’s hearing rooms, holding hands in prayer and carrying signs saying “Pope Sack Pell Now” and “Pell go to hell”.
Pell told the royal commission said Mulkearns’ refusal to act on the allegations against Ridsdale was extraordinary.
“I’ve got the full backing of the pope”, Pell told reporters late Monday Rome time as he arrived at a Rome hotel to resume his testimony.
Pell said Thursday he did not live at that presbytery at the time and described the language he allegedly used as “ridiculous”.
The cardinal said: “I owe a lot to the people and community of Ballarat, I acknowledge that, and with deep gratitude”.
Furness said that as an adviser to the bishop – one of a group of Ballarat priests known as the College of Consultors – Pell should have questioned why Ridsdale was frequently transferred.
Soon after becoming archbishop of Melbourne in July 1996, Pell appointed a senior barrister as the archdiocese’s commissioner on sexual abuse.
Cardinal Pell – who was then a Ballarat priest – had said he didn’t know Ridsdale’s offending was common knowledge in the Inglewood parish in 1975 and did not know about the allegations.
It provoked another hard exchange over what the cardinal knew at the time, with McClellan attempting to clarify his response, asking “You mean it was not inappropriate to move someone who might be moved to a different location where they could continue to offend but against different children?”
His comments were hard for victims in the audience to stomach.
However, the survivors had a meeting scheduled Thursday morning Rome time with the Rev. Hans Zollner, who is a member of the pope’s sex abuse advisory commission.
Prior to the commencement of his video evidence this week, Cardinal Pell said that he would be happy to meet privately with survivors from the Ballarat and Melbourne case studies in Rome for the Royal Commission hearing if this would be of help to them.
Abuse survivors in Australia have protested against this, leading the Australian comedian Tim Minchin to release a derisive song – in which he accuses Cardinal Pell of hypocrisy and cowardice for not returning to Australia to give evidence in person – to help fund their flights to Rome so they could witness the cardinal give evidence.
The Royal Commission is expected to conclude its hearing with the cardinal this evening.
“It’s a mystery, but in both cases for some reason, they were covering up”, Pell told the inquiry in Sydney via videolink from a Rome hotel.
He said paedophilia was definitely not discussed at the meeting.
Pell said he was only “tangentially, marginally” responsible for that failure “because as an auxiliary, you are not part of the official procedures”.
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