CANBERRA, Australia — One of Pope Francis’ top advisers has told reporters he has the pope’s backing as he prepared to testify for a second day at an Australian inquiry into child abuse.
Australian Cardinal George Pell met with the pope on Monday, hours after he gave evidence via videolink from Rome to the Royal Commission in Sydney.
“I’ve got the full backing of the pope,” Pell told reporters late Monday Rome time as he arrived at a Rome hotel to resume his testimony.
The Vatican said the private audience was a long-scheduled appointment related to Pell’s duties as Holy See finance minister, and had nothing to do with the abuse hearings.
Australia’s most senior Catholic later told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that he had not known notorious pedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale had abused children in the Australian country town of Inglewood in the 1970s until the former parish priest was convicted of those offenses in 1993.
Pell said he had not known the sexual abuse was common knowledge in Inglewood.
“I didn’t know whether it was common knowledge or whether it wasn’t. It’s a sad story and it wasn’t of much interest to me,” Pell said, bringing audible gasps from the public gallery.
“The suffering, of course, was real and I very much regret that, but I had no reason to turn my mind to the extent of the evils that Ridsdale had perpetrated,” he added.
Pell said it was “somewhat unusual” that Ridsdale was frequently transferred from parish to parish. But Pell said he had not known that the frequent moves were because of complaints of child abuse.
Pell conceded on his first day of evidence that the Catholic Church “has made enormous mistakes” in allowing thousands of children to be raped and molested by priests.
Two dozen Australian abuse survivors and their companions traveled across the globe to witness Pell’s testimony in a Rome hotel’s conference room, a significant show of accountability in the church’s long-running abuse saga.
