AUSTRALIA
The Australian
MEGAN NEIL
AAP
FEBRUARY 27, 2016
Cardinal George Pell was a strong presence in Phil Nagle’s life as a Catholic schoolboy in Ballarat.
Mr Nagle grew up in a strong Catholic family and was eight when he transferred to the Christian Brothers-run St Alipius Boys’ School in Ballarat East in 1973.
But as Mr Nagle told a Victorian inquiry in 2013: “Ballarat’s St Alipius Primary School in Victoria Street was certainly not the place to be if you were a Catholic boy going to school in the 1970s.”
Its 1973 staff included three pedophile Christian Brothers, with another also teaching there in the early 1970s.
The school chaplain was pedophile Gerald Francis Ridsdale, the Ballarat East assistant priest.
Cardinal Pell was the Ballarat East priest form 1973 until 1984 and, as episcopal vicar for education, oversaw Catholic schools in the Ballarat diocese during that time.
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