ROME
9 News
AAP
Cardinal George Pell says he didn’t know of sexual abuse perpetrated by pedophile priests in Victoria in the 1970s and has labelled a bishop’s handling of one notorious case as “catastrophic”.
On the first of four days of evidence to the child abuse royal commission via video link from Rome, Cardinal Pell was adamant he was unaware of predatory behaviour by priests and brothers when he was a junior priest in the diocese of Ballarat.
Cardinal Pell said the former Ballarat bishop Ronald Mulkearns knew in 1975 that notorious pedophile Father Gerald Ridsdale had abused boys but continued to move him to new parishes.
“The way he was dealt with, that was a catastrophe, a catastrophe for the victims and a catastrophe for the church,” Cardinal Pell told the hearing from a conference room inside Rome’s Hotel Quirinale.
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