ROME
Deutsche Welle
In his third day of testimony, a Vatican official has denied knowledge of child sex abuse cases in his native Australia. He says he was simultaneously kept in the dark, but also changed the culture of cover-ups.
An Australian commission investigating pedophilia allegations involving the Catholic Church and other social organizations challenged Cardinal George Pell, who is the pope’s chief financial adviser, over claims he was unaware of at least two cases of serial pedophilia when he was a locally-based clergy.
Speaking via video link from a hotel in Rome, Dell insists church authorities deceived him, not once but twice over child abuse allegations against priests Gerald Ridsdale and Peter Searson.
“Counsel, this was an extraordinary world,” Pell said. “A world of crimes and cover-ups and people did not want the status quo to be disturbed.”
And he further claimed to have changed a culture of “crimes and cover-ups” within the church in the 1990s.
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