AUSTRALIA
9 News
Four people who worked at the Catholic Education Office in Melbourne at the time Cardinal George Pell alleges the office kept him in the dark about a notoriously abusive priest will give evidence at a hearing on Wednesday.
The former education officers made statements to the child abuse royal commission after Cardinal Pell gave evidence from Rome last March that the Catholic Education Office withheld information from him.
Dr Pell was Auxiliary Bishop of Melbourne in 1989 with responsibility for education, when complaints were flooding in about the bizarre, abusive and sexualised behaviour of Father Peter Searson at the parish of Doveton.
Allegations against Searson included that he was threatening children at the Holy Family Primary School – he brought a hand gun to school, showed a body in a coffin to children and held a knife to a little girl’s chest.
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