AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

December 9, 2015

Jane Lee

A priest has denied a survivor’s allegations that Cardinal George Pell joked to him about paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale sexually abusing children.

A survivor, known as BWE, told a royal commission on Monday that he overheard then-Father Pell speaking to parish priest Father Frank Madden in the sacristy at St Patrick’s Cathedral in Ballarat while he prepared to serve as an altar boy for a funeral mass in 1983. BWE said Father Madden had asked Father Pell ‘How’s everything your way?’ and that he responded by saying, ‘Ha ha I think Gerry’s been rooting boys again’.”

Father Madden rejected the account to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on Wednesday, saying, “Absolutely not … I find that totally impossible. I didn’t co-celebrate a requiem mass with George Pell in the cathedral ever.”