AUSTRALIA
9 News
AAP
Cardinal George Pell will not be ordered back to Australia to testify to the child abuse royal commission, a ruling met with scepticism by abuse survivor groups.
Cardinal Pell will remain in his new home at the Vatican in Rome, with commissioner Peter McClellan accepting an Italian doctor’s evidence he is too sick to fly to Australia.
The decision has been met with suspicion by lawyers for former Melbourne school principal Graeme Sleeman, who resigned in 1986 in frustration over diocese inaction about an abusive parish priest.
Barrister Paul O’Dwyer, for Mr Sleeman, asked Justice McClellan on Monday to make Cardinal Pell’s medical report public.
“One of the issues in this case is the fact the church and particularly Archbishop Pell has a continuous history of non-disclosure and we would contend that this report, this medical report, is more of the same,” Mr O’Dwyer said.
Justice McClellan made some of Cardinal Pell’s medical details public but refused to release them in full.
He revealed the Italian report said Cardinal Pell was suffering high blood pressure and ischemic heart disease complicated by a previous heart attack.
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