ROME
The Guardian
Amanda Meade
Tuesday 1 March 2016
News Corp columnist Andrew Bolt, a staunch defender of Cardinal George Pell, has declared the Catholic cleric’s evidence at the royal commission on Tuesday “disastrous” and the case against him “very damning”.
In a dramatic reversal of his consistent defence of Pell, the Herald Sun commentator now says the Vatican’s finance chief was either lying or “dangerously indifferent” to the fact children were being raped.
On Tuesday afternoon Bolt stunned viewers when he told Sky News Australia that he had just witnessed Pell’s cross-examination in the hearing room in Rome and it was “terrible” and his image was forever damaged.
Under cross-examination by Gail Furness SC, counsel assisting the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse, Pell said he hadn’t asked about Gerald Ridsdale’s crimes: “It was a sad story and of not much interest to me. I had no reason to turn my mind to the evils Ridsdale had perpetrated.”
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