AUSTRALIA
The Age
[with video]
December 11, 2015
Jane Lee
Legal affairs, health and science reporter
Cardinal George Pell’s testimony to a child abuse royal commission has been delayed until next year because he is too unwell to travel to Australia.
The cardinal was to appear in person at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Melbourne next week to give evidence on how he responded to child abuse allegations as a priest in Ballarat and as the Archbishop of Melbourne.
His lawyer, Allan Myers, QC, asked the commission on Friday to allow his client to testify via video link from Rome, where he manages the Vatican’s finances, citing ill health.
The personal details of the medical certificates detailing Cardinal Pell’s condition — which were partly in Italian — were suppressed but understood to include his blood pressure. Mr Myers said he did not wish to “waive confidentiality” of his health records.
Cardinal Pell’s office released a statement shortly after the hearing, saying he had suffered from a heart condition “for some time”, and that its symptoms had “recently worsened”. A specialist cardiologist in Rome advised “it is not safe for him to undertake long haul flights in his current condition”. He “reluctantly and only on medical advice” asked to appear via video and had only decided in the “middle of this week” not to come to Australia.
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