AUSTRALIA
SBS
AAP
The royal commission into child sex abuse will hear from Cardinal George Pell on Monday, before he takes up his new job at the Vatican.
Former archbishop of Sydney George Pell takes the stand at a hearing on Monday to answer questions on how he handled an abuse complaint by former altar boy John Ellis.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse enters the third week of a hearing in Sydney in which Dr Pell’s senior associates have been grilled on why the archdiocese disputed in court that Mr Ellis had been abused when an internal church process had accepted his allegation as true.
Dr Pell is expected to shed light on his role in instructing the church’s legal team, which “vigorously defended” the case. It ended in a landmark finding, which some say created church immunity from abuse-related civil actions.
Mr Ellis was a 13-year-old altar boy at Bass Hill in Sydney in 1974 when Father Aidan Duggan first sexually abused him.
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