"We Never Clashed': Cardinal George Pell Talks about Living with Australia's Most Notorious Pedophile Priest Gerald Risdale

By Harry Pearl
Daily Mail
March 4, 2016

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3476318/Cardinal-George-Pell-talks-living-Australia-s-notorious-pedophile-priest-Gerald-Risdale.html

Australia's most notorious pedophile priest was a tense and unusual man but not someone Cardinal George Pell came to know well despite sharing a house with him.

'I didn't warm to him but we never clashed,' Cardinal Pell told Sky News on Friday, speaking of the 10 months he lived with Gerald Ridsdale at the Ballarat East presbytery where Ridsdale molested an 11-year-old girl in the 1970s.

The country's now most-senior Catholic said Ridsdale in essence was 'a mystery man'.

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Cardinal Pell gave his first interview to Sky News after appearing at a royal commission into child abuse

Cardinal Pell said Ridsdale was undoubtedly a capable man and was not someone people complained about to him at the time, even though they might have about other priests.

'I once celebrated mass after him and I remember his vestments were there and they were sopping wet from some tension or something like that, and I remember noticing that at the time, and I thought him a very tense man,' he said.

'But that's the only particular characteristic [of Ridsdale's] that I can remember.'

Cardinal Pell also revealed during a lengthy interview with Sky that he later learned a psychiatrist treating Ridsdale in 1975 was contacted by police who said they had held concerns about him but were pleased something was finally being done about him.

Cardinal Pell who spent four days giving evidence to the Royal Comission (left) said Ridsdale (right) was undoubtedly a capable man and was not someone people complained about to him at the time

Cardinal Pell who spent four days giving evidence to the Royal Comission (left) said Ridsdale (right) was undoubtedly a capable man and was not someone people complained about to him at the time

Catholic priest Gerald Ridsdale, who was jailed on pedophile charges in 1994

Cardinal Pell gave his first interview to one of his defenders, Andrew Bolt, on Sky News on Friday

However, the psychiatrist had been compelled to explain that he hadn't been treating Ridsdale's sexual behaviours, rather his anxiety.

Cardinal Pell, 74, who was questioned by the abuse royal commission over Ridsdale and other pedophile priests in the Ballarat and Melbourne dioceses this week, said he felt tremendous relief that everything was now said and done.

While acknowledging that his denials of a cover-up angered abuse victims who said he must have known, he said he regretted putting the church before victims in the past but he had never put himself before either.

He said the reason he sometimes came across as 'wooden' and 'armour-plated' was partly to do with how he'd been trained, partly to do with his personality and partly to do with 'needing to survive'.

He said the 'evil, insensitive stereotype' being pushed by the media was incorrect.

'It's very, very difficult and upsetting. There's no way around it and I've tried to put out the truth,' he said.

Cardinal Pell described claims that Victoria Police were investigating him over alleged abuse as 'extraordinary and completely false'.

He said he had not been approached by police.

When asked whether he would resign from his high-ranking position, he gave an emphatic no.

'I wouldn't resign as that would be taken as an admission of guilt,' Cardinal Pell said.

Australian Cardinal George Pell (C) speaks to journalists at the end of a meeting with the sex abuse victims, at the Quirinale hotel in Rome

Cardinal Pell leaves the Quirinale hotel after meeting the relatives and victims of priestly sex abuses