AUSTRALIA
news.com.au
CARDINAL George Pell has moved to “correct the record” after being accused at the sex abuse royal commission of bribing a victim of pedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale to keep quiet.
THE commission, sitting in Ballarat this week, also heard claims the cardinal had dismissed another abuse victim’s complaint as “ridiculous” and was complicit in moving Ridsdale to another parish.
The Vatican’s finance chief on Wednesday denied all the accusations.
The former Sydney archbishop has been mentioned at the commission by several witnesses who say he knew – or at the least suggest he might have known – about the widespread abuse in Ballarat while he was a senior priest there in the 1970s.
The cardinal will have to answer to the commission after David Ridsdale, the nephew of Australia’s worst pedophile priest, said he told Cardinal Pell in 1993 about the abuse at the hands of his uncle.
Mr Ridsdale told the commission Cardinal Pell, a family friend, asked him: “I want to know what it will take to keep you quiet.”
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