Australian cardinal didn’t quickly act on pedophile claim

One of Pope Francis’ top advisers told an Australian inquiry on Wednesday that he should have done more to ensure a suspected pedophile cleric did not continue to abuse children.

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.

Pell testified that he raised his concerns with the St. Patricks’ College chaplain who told Pell that the Christian Brothers order was “dealing with” the allegations.

Justice Peter McClellan told Pell that made no sense.

Cardinal Pell was asked why he thought there were so many sex offenders within the congregation during his tenure in Ballarat during the 1970s and ’80s, to which Cardinal Pell said it was a “disastrous coincidence”.

However, he has acknowledged he heard rumors about Brother Ted Dowlan’s inappropriate behavior with boys at a Christian Brothers school. Dowlan was later removed from the school.

Pell testified on the case from Rome via videolink because he reportedly said he was unable to travel to Sydney, where the hearing is taking place, due to heart problems.

“People had a different attitude then”. “No improprieties were ever alleged to me”, Cardinal Pell said.

“I not only disturbed the status quo, but when I became archbishop, I turned the situation right around so that the Melbourne Response procedures were light years ahead of all this obfuscation and prevarication and deception”, he added, referring a program he initiated in 1996 to pay compensation to clergy-abuse victims.

“I had no reason to turn my mind to the extent of evils that Ridsdale had perpetrated”, explained Pell, regarding the pedophile priest in question, a former roommate of his.

“I now realise that was a mistake”. “I was told there was something in them and that it was being dealt with”.

“The predisposition was not to believe”, Cardinal Pell, 74 years old, told the Australia-based inquiry by video-link from Rome.

“I sat there while he admitted having knowledge of the guy that got me, Dowlan”, Blenkiron told reporters outside the hotel.

Two dozen Australian abuse victims and their companions traveled across the globe to witness Pell’s testimony in a hotel conference room, a significant show of accountability in the church’s long-running abuse saga.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said no papal audience was planned with the victims.

Cardinal Pell released a statement on Wednesday where he offered to meet victims in small groups, without lawyers or media present.

Peter Gogarty, who has published a book about his abuse at the hands of the now dead paedophile priest, James Fletcher, said that despite having nothing to do with Cardinal Pell, he was surprised by how his testimony had impacted on him.