ROME
9 News
By Nick Alexander
Cardinal George Pell has drawn gasps from the survivors watching his testimony in a Rome hotel room, saying that the crimes of convicted pedophile Gerard Ridsdale were “a sad story and it wasn’t of much interest to me”.
Early on in the second day of his video testimony before a Royal Commission, Cardinal Pell was questioned about whether he knew of the dozens of sexual crimes committed by Ridsdale against children in Inglewood during the 1970s.
Gail Furness SC had put it to Cardinal Pell that his superior, Bishop Mulkearns, had been informed by a police officer, a Detective Sergeant Mooney, that Ridsdale was under investigation for interfering with children.
The abuse, DS Mooney was quoted as saying, was “pretty common knowledge all through the congregation. Pretty much everyone you would speak to knew about it.”
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