ROME
SBS
A group of child sex abuse survivors say they’ve given up on Cardinal George Pell after hearing his evidence to a royal commission and have appealed directly to the Pope to ensure children are protected.
The group, many of whom were abused as children by pedophile priests in the Catholic diocese of Ballarat in Victoria, has been in Rome to hear the cardinal give evidence to the child sex abuse royal commission.
But on Wednesday they told journalists they had sent a letter seeking a meeting with Pope Francis and were no longer seeking a meeting with Cardinal Pell.
During a break in the hearing, in which the cardinal is giving evidence by videolink to the commission sitting in Sydney, abuse survivor Phil Nagle read out a letter his group had sent to the Pope.
The letter requested a meeting between the Pope and the Australian survivor group to discuss protecting children so the type of sex abuse children had suffered in the past was never repeated.
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