ROME/AUSTRALIA
Los Angeles Times
[note: Testimony will begin in the U.S. at 4 p.m. (eastern time zone) on Sunday and will be live- streamed from the Royal Commission web site.]
Tom Kington
An extraordinary scene will unfold in a hotel in Rome late Sunday night when one of Pope Francis’ most trusted advisors sits down for the first of up to four nights of live-streamed testimony about his role in an alleged cover-up of sexual abuse in Australia.
Cardinal George Pell, the Vatican finance minister and Australia’s senior Roman Catholic cleric, will be subjected to questioning from 10 p.m. until 2 a.m. nightly for at least three and possibly four nights by judges linked via video from halfway around the world in Sydney, where it will be morning.
Pell, 74, has not been allowed to have a lawyer travel from his home country to be at his side, but he will not be alone: He is being joined during the hearings by a group of victims of priestly abuse who are traveling from Australia to be in the room with him.
In December, Pell was summoned to give evidence about abuse near Melbourne, Australia, but his lawyers argued his heart condition made it dangerous to fly, and suggested he speak by videolink from Rome.
Australia’s Royal Commission on child abuse wants to quiz the cardinal about his alleged role in moving a pedophile priest, Gerald Ridsdale, from one parish to another in Australia in the 1970s and 1980s — a common pattern in Catholic dioceses around the world at the time.
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