AUSTRALIA
The Guardian (UK)
Helen Davidson
theguardian.com, Monday 24 March 2014
A defensive Cardinal George Pell gave evidence to the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse on Monday, claiming ignorance of key aspects of the infamous John Ellis case and rebuffing much of the testimony given by church representatives in previous days.
Pell, appearing at the public hearing before taking up a senior role at the Vatican next Monday, described one former colleague as “a muddler” who was “sometimes illogical”.
The hearing is examining the Catholic church’s response to allegations made by the former altar boy John Ellis, who was abused by his parish priest, Father Aiden Duggan, in Sydney between 1974 and 1979. Ellis sued the church in 2007 but lost when the supreme court ruled that the church an entity could not be sued.
Senior counsel assisting the commission Gail Furness first took Pell through the minutes of several meetings of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference in the 1990s which discussed the development of the church’s Towards Healing process and other responses to claims of child sexual abuse by clergy.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.