AUSTRALIA/ROME
The Australian
MARCH 1, 2016
Michael Bodey
Film editor/media journalist
Sydney
Columnist and broadcaster Andrew Bolt has secured an exclusive interview with Cardinal George Pell at the conclusion of his evidence to the Royal Commission into child abuse.
The columnist for News Corp Australia newspapers is in Rome covering the Cardinal’s evidence as a special contributor for the Sky News channel.
Bolt has secured a one-hour interview with the Cardinal to be broadcast live-to-air to Australia on Thursday morning, directly after his final day giving evidence to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
The Catholic Church is understood to have agreed to the interview with Bolt, who has defended the Cardinal in his writings, even deriding his own paper, the Herald Sun’s exclusive reporting of Victoria Police investigations into the Cardinal.
But Bolt turned after the second day of evidence from Rome, when the Cardinal denied having knowledge of the activities of notorious paedophile priest Father Gerard Ridsdale and dismissing it as a “sad story” that “wasn’t of much interest to me”.
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