Given Pell’s high rank within the church, his testimony to Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Response to Child Sexual Abuse over cases that occurred decades ago has taken on wider implications about the accountability of church leaders.
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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 only thing I did was that I walked his uncle into court on the day of his trial and I now realise that was a mistake”, he said. “I regret that even at this stage I wasn’t a bit more vigorous in my questioning or commenting”.
Eventually he raised the matter with the chaplain of St Patrick’s College, the Ballarat school where Brother Edward Dowlan was violently abusing boys, and was satisfied when he was told the matter was being looked after.
In a moment of frustration, Pell said “you can’t wave a magic wand and correct the situation easily in every situation”.
Commissioner McClellan asked the cardinal why he had to be asked to take action. “He needs to stop the charade and show some compassion”, Leonie Sheedy, whose brother was abused by a Christian Brother at a boy’s home, told Al Jazeera in Sydney during an interval in the testimony.
Dowlan was removed from the school after admitting that he had abused children.
“I walked with him following the Christian conviction that it’s an appropriate activity to be kind to prisoners… the separation of the sheep from the goats is their acts of kindness we do to people, including those who are prisoners and those who are at the bottom of the pile like Ridsdale”, he said. I can only tell you the way it was as far as I’m concerned.
Pell said that he had asked officials for a briefing about one priest, Peter Searson, after he heard complaints in but was “deceived” into believing nothing was wrong.
As to the crimes of notorious paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale, well, Pell just wasn’t that interested.
The cardinal has also claimed that he was victim to “a gross deception” by his then bishop, Dr Robert Mulkearns, and Msgr Leo Fiscalini, with whom he was in a 1982 meeting that discussed moving the then Fr Gerald Ridsdale between parishes.
Ridsdale, who was repeatedly moved from parish to parish, was later convicted of 138 offences against 53 victims.
“Children that were abused and damaged in the past”.
He was directly confronted by the Commission with the suggestion he was lying about having knowledge of Ridsdale’s paedophilia, an accusation he called “completely untrue and unjustified by any evidence”.
When asked if the general attitude of the church was to not believe a child, he said it “certainly was much, much more hard for the child to be believed then … the predisposition was not to believe”.
Sexual abuse survivors have travelled to Rome to watch the cardinal give evidence.
In addition to a meeting with Pell, sex abuse victims now in Rome have also requested an audience with Pope Francis, but the Vatican has been silent on whether the Pontiff will be available.
Cardinal George Pell is set to be questioned by sex abuse victims’ lawyers at the royal commission.
‘I think it was a disastrous coincidence, ‘ Cardinal Pell told the child abuse royal commission on Thursday from Rome.
Pell was also questionned about another priest, Peter Searson, who died in 2009 and is accused of abusing minors in Ballarat from the 1970s onwards.
Though Pell said he was made aware of some cases of other priests sexually abusing children in Ballarat, Pell alleges that he wasn’t told the specifics of the claims of abuse against Ridsdale.
Cardinal Pell told the commission that it was not his responsibility to initiate an investigation.
By day three on Wednesday, numerous 20 people gathered in Rome, including survivors and supporters, had given up on Dr Pell and made a decision to go straight to the Pope.
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