AUSTRALIA
The Guardian
Melissa Davey
@MelissaLDavey
Monday 31 October 2016
Cardinal George Pell has said he will not be drawn into responding to criticism by the counsel assisting the royal commission on child sexual abuse.
A submission from Gail Furness SC and Stephen Free, the counsel, argued that based on the cardinal’s’s evidence to the commission, as well as evidence from Catholic Education Office staff and child sexual abuse victims, Pell should have taken stronger action against a paedophile priest, Peter Searson.
On Tuesday Pell’s office in Rome said: “The cardinal has already responded directly to counsel assisting’s submissions in the written submissions published under his name on the royal commission website. As the royal commission has not yet made findings in these case studies, it is not appropriate, at this time, for parties to comment.”
Searson was the parish priest of Doveton, south-east of Melbourne, from 1984 until 1997. Pell, now the Vatican’s financial controller in Rome, was at the time auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Melbourne and oversaw positions such as Searson’s.
The commission has previously heard Searson abused children in parishes and schools across three districts over more than a decade, and displayed strange behaviours such as animal cruelty and carrying a gun to school.
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