AUSTRALIA
The Age
May 28, 2015
Rania Spooner
Paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale has conceded he shared meals with George Pell and chatted with him when the pair lived together in the ’70s, but denied telling the prominent Catholic leader that he was abusing children.
The admission comes after he told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on Wednesday, which was holding hearings in Ballarat, that he could not remember living with Cardinal Pell at all.
Records show they lived together for about a year.
The commission has also heard that Cardinal Pell was present at a September 1982 meeting involving three other senior clerics – including then-Bishop Ronald Mulkearns – who had all received complaints about Ridsdale’s behaviour towards children.
At the meeting there was a discussion about removing Ridsdale from the Victorian town of Mortlake – where he has since admitted abusing more than 50 children – and moving him to Sydney.
Ridsdale accepted the reason that he was moved was to get him away from Victorian parishes and limit his access to children.
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