AUSTRALIA
Daily Mail
AAP
The buck stops with Cardinal George Pell who must return from Rome to answer allegations against him, child sex abuse victims have told the royal commission.
They say it’s inconceivable he did not know about the clergy abusing children in Ballarat while he was a senior priest in the city in the 1970s.
But Cardinal Pell, now the Vatican’s finance chief, has again rejected claims he tried to bribe one victim to keep quiet, ignored complaints and was complicit in moving Australia’s worst pedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale to a different parish.
Victim Paul Tatchell said responsibility for the abuse had to be taken by someone in the Catholic Church in Australia, and called on Ballarat-born Cardinal Pell to return from the Vatican and answer to the royal commission.
“He may not have the intestinal fortitude or the ability to see beyond his own vanity but it’s his ambition that got him there and it will take his humility to get him out of there,” Mr Tatchell told the commission hearing in Ballarat on Thursday.
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