AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

February 22, 2016

Chris Johnston
Senior Writer for The Age

Clerical abuse survivors from Ballarat will be able to listen to Cardinal George Pell’s evidence before a Royal Commission from a hotel room in Rome next week.

A Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse hearing in Ballarat was told this morning the request to fly to Rome – paid for by a successful crowd-funding campaign – to hear Cardinal Pell from Rome rather than Sydney was, according to Justice Peter Maclellan, “reasonable.”

Cardinal Pell’s evidence will be heard while the Commission sits in Sydney next Monday.

However Justice Maclellan said the Australian embassy in Rome had secured a hotel room with the appropriate technical facilities to get a signal of his evidence to Sydney and accommodate the survivors who want to be in Rome to hear it.