Pell 'shocked' after abuse victim call, by Megan Neil, Cairns Post (December 15, 2015)

CARDINAL George Pell appeared shocked and crestfallen after speaking to a clergy abuse victim who alleges he asked what it would take to keep him quiet, an inquiry has heard.

MENTONE parish priest Rev John Walshe said Cardinal Pell looked ashen but did not appear angry after a 1993 phone call with David Ridsdale.

Mr Ridsdale, a victim and nephew of pedophile priest Gerald Francis Ridsdale, has accused Cardinal Pell of trying to bribe him by saying: "I want to know what it will take to keep you quiet." Fr Walshe, who shared a house with the then-Melbourne bishop, said Cardinal Pell told him after the call: "Ridsdale's played up, even played up with his nephew." Counsel assisting the child abuse royal commission Angus Stewart SC has suggested Fr Walshe's description of Cardinal Pell still fits with Mr Ridsdale's allegation.

"If what David Ridsdale says about the call is true, then of course the cardinal, or the bishop as he was then, would be crestfallen because he'd been called out on his effort to, as it were, buy David Ridsdale," Mr Stewart said. Fr Walshe said he could not comment on Mr Ridsdale's claims. Mr Stewart suggested Cardinal Pell would just as likely look crestfallen and shocked if the call happened as Mr Ridsdale described. Fr Walshe said: "That could be true, except that the accompanying comments in a sense elucidate what seemed to be his demeanour." Cardinal Pell, the Vatican's financial manager, has repeatedly denied Mr Ridsdale's allegation. Fr Walshe made a statement to the commission after a request from Cardinal Pell's legal team a fortnight ago. Fr Walshe said Cardinal Pell did not look well when they met in Rome last month, before the cardinal's now postponed commission appearance. "I think it was weighing heavily on him. I couldn't get over how poorly he looked when I saw him last month," Fr Walshe said. "He'd put on a lot of weight, he's not moving very well, and I just thought his general demeanour was very grey. He was very ashen and grey." Cardinal Pell's evidence was postponed after his doctors deemed it unsafe for him to make the long-haul flight to Melbourne due to a worsened heart condition. The commission has also heard former Ballarat bishop Ronald Mulkearns, who moved pedophile priests including Ridsdale between parishes, is profoundly sorry for what he did. Bishop Mulkearns struggles to sleep at night, retired priest John McKinnon says. "These things now are on his mind. He didn't remember details, but he was profoundly sorry for what he'd done; for what he hadn't done, I suppose, is more like it," Fr McKinnon said. Bishop Mulkearns, the 1971-1997 Ballarat bishop, is in palliative care with advanced cancer and will not give evidence to the commission unless his health improves.