Victims and relatives of children who claim they were sexually abused by the Catholic Church hold placards as they stand outside the venue for Australia's Royal Commission into Institutional Response to Child Sexual Abuse in Sydney, Australia, February 29, 2016.DAVID GRAY/Reuters
One of Pope Francis's top advisers told an Australian inquiry into child sex abuse on Tuesday that an Australian bishop had deceived him about the reason a pedophile priest was repeatedly transferred from parish to parish.
Australian Cardinal George Pell was a priest in the town of Ballarat in 1970s who advised Bishop Ronald Mulkearns about the placement of priests within the diocese.
Cardinal Pell, now the Pope's top financial adviser, told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that while Bishop Mulkearns and another priest at the regular committee meetings, Monsignor Leo Fiscalini, both knew about serious sexual assault allegations against notorious pedophile Gerald Ridsdale, neither mentioned them.
"It probably would be possible to imagine a greater deception, but it's a gross deception," Cardinal Pell told the Sydney inquiry via videolink from a Rome hotel.
It was the second day of evidence for the 74-year-old cleric, who because of ill health could not travel to Australia to give evidence in person at the inquiry into decades of child abuse.
Two dozen Australian abuse survivors and their companions travelled across the globe to witness Cardinal Pell's testimony in a hotel conference room, a significant show of accountability in the church's long-running abuse saga.
Cardinal Pell said he suspected Bishop Mulkearns concealed the allegations against Father Ridsdale because the bishop didn't want to share culpability with Cardinal Pell for allowing Father Ridsdale to continue abusing children.
"He might have wanted to protect us from his wrong doing," Cardinal Pell said. "He might have feared that, if he told us the truth, that people like myself would have said: 'Well, look, is that correct? I am not sure we should be going in that direction at all.'"
Cardinal Pell said he could not recall if he had asked the bishop why Father Risdale was transferred with "somewhat unusual" frequency.
"Obviously there were a series of difficulties, but it certainly was not stated that those difficulties touched on pedophilia and crimes," Cardinal Pell said.
Cardinal Pell said priests didn't discuss with him the allegations against Father Ridsdale, even though they were common knowledge in the towns of Apollo Bay and Inglewood where Father Ridsdale had been the parish priest.
Cardinal Pell's testimony was interrupted by jeers from the public gallery as he explained the moral framework in which priests live.
"We work within a framework of Christian moral teaching, or certainly we should, and discussion of the secret faults of others is not encouraged," Cardinal Pell said.
Cardinal Pell said he had not known the sexual abuse was common knowledge in Inglewood.
"I didn't know whether it was common knowledge or whether it wasn't. It's a sad story and it wasn't of much interest to me," Cardinal Pell said, bringing audible gasps and jeers from the public gallery.
"The suffering, of course, was real and I very much regret that, but I had no reason to turn my mind to the extent of the evils that Ridsdale had perpetrated," he added.
Pell rejected an accusation made by the lead counsel assisting the commission, Gail Furness, that his answers were designed to remove his own responsibility for Ridsdale's crimes.
"My answers were designed to answer your questions accurately and completely," Pell said.
Ridsdale's nephew David Ridsdale, who was raped by his uncle, said outside the Rome hotel he did not believe that Pell had been unaware of the pedophile allegations.
"It beggars belief that he could have said he wasn't interested in hearing about the crimes of my uncle," Ridsdale told reporters.
Before Cardinal Pell's testimony on Tuesday, he told reporters: "I've got the full backing of the Pope."
The Vatican said a private audience Pell had with the Pope on Monday was a long-scheduled appointment related to Pell's duties as Holy See finance minister, and had nothing to do with the abuse hearings.