Cardinal George Pell: Complete Royal Commission Findings to Be Released Within Days

Australian Associated Press via The Guardian
May 5, 2020

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/may/05/cardinal-george-pell-complete-royal-commission-findings-to-be-released-within-days

Cardinal George Pell in 2008. The royal commission questioned the cardinal on the church’s response to abuse complaints in Melbourne and Ballarat. Photograph: Paul Miller/AAP

A royal commission’s findings about Cardinal George Pell’s knowledge of historical child sexual abuse complaints will be released within days.

The federal attorney general, Christian Porter, says he has been advised that the two royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse reports can now be published in full.

Porter said that would happen within days, although he would not give a specific release date.

“The advice is that it is now okay to publish the unredacted version,” he told the ABC on Tuesday.

Porter said he would read the reports and consider the final legal advice, but did not expect there to be any problem with the release of the documents.

“They’ve only just arrived with me now that that advice has been received, so it’s just a matter of process from here and that will be a matter of days.”

The reports into the Catholic church’s response to abuse complaints and allegations in the Melbourne archdiocese and Victoria’s Ballarat diocese were released in December 2017.

Both had sections blacked out to avoid prejudicing any current or future prosecutions, including the child sexual abuse case against Pell.

The former Vatican treasurer and Melbourne and Sydney archbishop was freed from jail on 7 April after the high court overturned his convictions.

The royal commission’s findings will not relate to abuse allegations against Pell himself, but rather his knowledge of complaints against pedophile priests and Christian Brothers.

In 2016, Pell told the royal commission he was deceived about paedophile priests in “a world of crimes and cover-ups” and did not know about the abuse.

Pell was a Ballarat priest from 1973 until 1984, overseeing the diocese’s schools and at times acting as an adviser to the bishop.

He also served as one of the Melbourne archbishop’s advisers while an auxiliary bishop between 1987 and 1996.