Cardinal Pell knew about priests’ child sexual abuse, inquiry finds

Australian Cardinal George Pell, who was successful in overturning his child sexual abuse conviction last month, knew about Catholic priests abusing children for decades, but did not do enough, a de-redacted report by a Royal Commission inquiry has said. 

The report was initially released in December 2017 by the five-year-long Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse. But more than 100 pages were redacted to avoid prejudicing Pell’s trial. 

Pell, 78, was convicted by a jury in December 2018 for sexually assaulting two choirboys at a Melbourne Cathedral in 1996. The High Court unanimously decided to quash the convictions last month. 

The Australian government released the inquiry report, covering abuse cases in Pell’s hometown of Ballarat and Melbourne, where he was an archbishop in the 1990s, on Thursday.

Pell knew about the “infractions of a sexual nature with minors” by Christian Brothers in the early 1970s, according to the report. 

Pell told the inquiry that, with hindsight, he should have done more and regretted not doing more at the time. 

Pell lived with Gerald Ridsdale, a prolific paedophile priest who is serving jail for sexually abusing more than 60 children, for nine or 10 months in 1973 after both of them were appointed assistant priests at Ballarat East. 

Pell had heard about Ridsdale’s conduct around children, and child sexual abuse was “at least on his radar,” Pell told the inquiry from Rome via video link in 2016.

By 1973, “Cardinal Pell was not only conscious of child sexual abuse by clergy but that he also had considered measures of avoiding situations which might provoke gossip about it,” the inquiry found.

The inquiry also found Pell was knowingly involved in moving Ridsdale from parish to parish, where he continued his abuse. 

The inquiry rejected Pell’s version that “paedophilia was not mentioned” and that the “true” reason was not given at the meeting of the consultors to decide on moving Ridsdale, even though Pell conceded that it was “unusual” to have someone move so many times. 

“It is implausible” that the bishop presiding the meeting “did not inform those attending of at least complaints of sexual abuse of children having been made,” the inquiry found. 

Pell had supported and appeared alongside Ridsdale during his first court appearance for child sex offences in 1993. 

At one point, Pell told the 2016 inquiry that Ridsdale’s offending with minors was “a sad story and it wasn’t of much interest to me.”

“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 told the inquiry.

Also, in late 1974, Pell was told by a St Patrick’s College student about the abuse one of the Christian Brothers abusing children at Eureka swimming pool in Ballarat, where Pell was a priest.

“Father Pell said words to the effect of ‘Don’t be ridiculous’ and walked away,” the report said, adding that Pell told the inquiry “he had no recollection,” but did not say it was untrue. 

The report also found that when Pell was Auxiliary Bishop in 1989 at the Melbourne Archdiocese, he had “the capacity and opportunity to urge the Archbishop to take action” against one paedophile priest, but he “did not do so.” 

Later, as Melbourne Archbishop, Pell did not stand down a priest who was going to be charged with child sex abuse for several months, despite knowing that it was going to happen and having the authority to do so, the inquiry found. 

The royal commission hearings never touch on allegations faced by Pell himself regarding child sexual abuse.

Pell is the former Vatican treasurer and a one-time close adviser to Pope Francis, and remains a cardinal. He spent more than 400 days behind bars. He now lives quietly at the Good Shepherd Seminary in a Sydney suburb of Homebush.

Pell’s position as Australia’s highest-ranking representative in the Catholic Church “should be reviewed based on his choice to protect paedophiles over innocent children, at the time the abuse occurred,” said Shine Lawyers’ Lisa Flynn, who represents the father of one of Pell alleged victim who died after a drug overdose in 2014. 

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“Pell’s preference to protect paedophiles over the safety of children is deplorable,” she said in a statement on Thursday. 

“Pell has been released from prison for accusations against him but we still believe a raft of other allegations will be put forward, to hold him to account for the grave wrong that was permitted under his watch,” Flynn said. (dpa)