VATICAN CITY/AUSTRALIA
BBC News
The Vatican’s finance chief George Pell has offered to testify in a high-profile Australian inquiry into institutional child sex abuse.
The cardinal was formerly the Archbishop of Sydney, Australia’s most senior Catholic official.
He is accused of silencing a victim of a paedophile priest and aiding the priest’s move to another parish.
Australia is investigating how schools, churches and the government responded to child abuse cases.
‘Horrified’
This week a royal commission began hearing testimony from victims in Ballarat in the state of Victoria, where Gerald Ridsdale had sexually abused dozens of boys in various parishes between the 1950s and 1970s.
Mr Pell has been accused of being complicit in moving Ridsdale around the state, and of attempting to bribe Ridsdale’s nephew into keeping quiet about his abuse.
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