AUSTRALIA
7 News
Lisa Martin
AAP
The royal commission into child sex abuse may need to have separate public and confidential volumes in order to avoid prejudicing Cardinal George Pell’s legal case.
The final report is expected to be in the order of 15,000 pages long and goes to the federal government on December 15.
AAP understands the commission and government are grappling with potential legal issues over the Pell case.
The royal commission has only examined Pell’s handling of abuse allegations against other clergy in the church while he was Melbourne Archbishop and a Ballarat priest and not claims against him personally.
Pell, Australia’s highest-ranking Catholic official and ranked number three in the Vatican, was charged in June with multiple historical sex offence charges involving multiple complainants.
There has been speculation in legal circles that the public release of the final report and Melbourne and Ballarat case studies may have to be delayed.
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