Australian cardinal says he has ‘full backing’ of pope

“The Church in many places, certainly in Australia, has mucked things up, has let people down”.

Ridsdale’s nephew, David Ridsdale, was among 15 abuse victims and supporters who traveled to Rome on the back of a crowd-funding campaign to see Pell give evidence after he said he was unable to travel to his native Australia because of heart problems.

Pell was giving evidence from a hotel in Rome via video-link to Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Sydney for a second of three days.

The hearing started on the same night that Spotlight, a film about newspaper reporters who uncovered systemic paedophilia in the Church in Boston, won the Academy Award for best picture.

In the opening hour of testimony on Monday, Pell said the Church had made “enormous mistakes and is working to remedy those” in relation to its handling of child sexual abuse. “It’s a sad story and it wasn’t of much interest to me”.

The commission’s current hearings relate to Ballarat and how the Melbourne archdiocese responded to allegations of abuse, including when Pell served as a Melbourne auxiliary bishop.

“It was all parish priests, assistant priests, advisers, consultors, who all collectively failed to protect children who were living and under the care of the church in that diocese in the [1970s and 1980s]”, she said.

Meanwhile, Ballarat, where Pell had been a priest for so long, was roiling from a sexual abuse scandal that was still being uncovered.

He was questioned about Edward Dowlan, a Christian Brother who taught at the city’s St Patrick’s College. Four were ultimately convicted of sex crimes; another died before the accusations became public.

Pell, appearing before the commission for the second day via videolink, said the bishop and senior cleric Monsignor Leo Fiscalini deceived him and other advisers at meetings which discussed moving Ridsdale.

Australian Cardinal George Pell was a priest in the 1970s in the town of Ballarat where he advised Bishop Ronald Mulkearns about the placement of priests within the diocese.

“I had my own bedroom at the presbytery but that was just a front”.

Special prosecutor Gail Furness quizzed Pell via video link from Sydney on Monday. “A catastrophe for the victims and a catastrophe for the Church”.

Anthony Foster, whose eldest daughter was repeatedly raped by priest Kevin O’Donnell and committed suicide, said it was “astounding and empowering for victims” that the commission was now sitting in judgment of Pell on a global stage.

Pell replied: “That is correct”.

The cardinal said he had heard “one or two fleeting references” to “misbehaviour” by Dowlan in the 1970s “which I concluded might have been paedophilia activity”.

Last year, Dowlan was sentenced to six years in prison for abusing 20 boys.

The Royal Commission in December accepted medical advice that 85-year-old Mulkearns was dying and was unfit to testify. Fitzgerald died in 1987, without ever being charged with a crime.

He denied all personal knowledge of these complaints, saying in hindsight, the way Ridsdale was handled by officials who did know was “unacceptable”.

“I wasn’t suggesting for a minute that it wasn’t known amongst the people you have listed”.

Cardinal Pell’s testimony was interrupted by jeers from the public gallery as he explained the moral framework in which priests live.

But the cardinal also acknowledged that he too had made mistakes in often believing the priests over victims who alleged abuse. “Actions are another”, he said, in calling for a church-funded compensation scheme that addresses the fact that many survivors are so traumatized by their abuse that they can not support themselves financially.

But he said he couldn’t ever recall hearing a complaint about abuse himself. “Well, the whole world ain’t that gullible”.

“We feel like we’ve watched a performance rather than evidence”, Mr Ridsdale said.

“We’ve got to be fair to George Pell, but he hasn’t impressed me so far”.