Australia’s Cardinal Pell to testify from Rome in abuse inquiry

AUSTRALIA
BBC News

Vatican treasurer Cardinal George Pell is to testify from Rome via video link to an Australian inquiry into child sex abuse.

Cardinal Pell, Australia’s most senior Catholic, will be asked whether he knew if paedophiles were active in churches under his watch.

Abuse survivors have flown to Rome to face the cardinal, who was excused from returning to Sydney due to ill health.

The hearing is expected to run at least three days.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse is holding its second round of inquiries into child sex abuse that occurred in the city of Ballarat in Victoria state.

Cardinal Pell was a priest in Ballarat and lived in a seminary with a notorious paedophile priest, Gerald Ridsdale, in the early 1970s.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.