Pressure mounts on Pell as royal commission submits damning report

AUSTRALIA
Daily Telegraph

Shannon Deery, The Daily Telegraph
October 31, 2016

AUSTRALIA’S most senior Catholic Cardinal, George Pell, was involved in knowingly shuffling paedophile priests between parishes, according to the counsel assisting the child sex abuse inquiry.

And there was strong evidence implicating Cardinal Pell in a church cover-up, the counsel said in submissions to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse published yesterday.

Cardinal Pell strongly denied the claims in his 71-page submission, which was also published yesterday.

Counsel assisting Gail Furness SC, Angus Steward SC and Stephen Free, said Cardinal Pell knew paedophile Gerald Ridsdale was being moved between parishes because of his crimes against children

Cardinal Pell served as a consulter to former Ballarat bishop Ronald Mulkearns, who oversaw the movement of several paedophile priests. At a consultors meeting in 1982 it was decided to move Ridsdale from the parish of Mortlake, where he committed some of his worst offences.

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