AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun
CARDINAL George Pell signed off on a lavish retirement fund for one of the state’s most notorious paedophile priests while he was still the subject of a police investigation.
Just a week after Pell ordered the plush retirement fund, disgraced priest Wilfred Baker was charged with more than a dozen vile sex acts and was subsequently jailed.
Documents tendered to the child abuse Royal Commission yesterday reveal Baker had been the subject of a police investigation for more than a year at the time Pell arranged his retirement fund.
And his widespread offending had been widely known by church authorities for two decades.
The stunning revelations are expected to increase the pressure on Pell, Australia’s highest-ranked Catholic, when he returns to Melbourne next month to give evidence at commission.
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