ROME
euronews
By Philip Pullella
ROME (Reuters) – Australian Cardinal George Pell on Sunday becomes the highest-ranking Vatican official to testify on sexual abuse of children in the Catholic Church at a hearing that victims have flown half way around the world to attend.
Pell, 74, who said he was unable to travel to his native Australia because of heart problems, will answer questions from a Rome hotel put via video link by Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Response to Child Sexual Abuse.
While strictly speaking an Australian affair concerning events decades ago, the hearing has taken on wider implications about accountability of Church leaders because of Pell’s high position in the Vatican, where he serves as finance minister.
After the Commission allowed Pell to testify from Rome, it bowed to demands by victims’ groups to observe. A national crowd funding campaign raised the money to fly about 15 victims and supporters so they could be in the same room with Australia’s most senior Catholic clergyman.
“This is the most Catholic city in the world, in every sense,” Andrew Collins, who was a abused by priests as a boy and is one of the victims who travelled to Rome, told the Australian newspaper The Courier.
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