AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun
January 4, 2016
Shannon Deery
Herald Sun
CARDINAL George Pell toured the Somme battlefields just weeks before poor health forced him to cancel a trip to Melbourne to testify at the child abuse royal commission.
Victims of child sexual abuse were angered when the cardinal, 74, backed out of personally appearing at the inquiry in December, citing a longstanding health problem.
His doctors deemed it was unsafe for him to make the long-haul flight from the Vatican to Australia.
He offered to give evidence via video link, but his appearance before the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was instead postponed.
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