ROME
Voice of Americai
March 3, 2016.
Sharee Devose
A top Vatican official vowed Thursday to work to better protect children in his Australian hometown acknowledging he failed to act on an allegation of clergy sexual abuse decades ago.
Pope Francis’ top financial adviser Cardinal George Pell met with victims of abuse who traveled from Australia to Rome to witness his four days of testimony delivered to Australia’s Royal Commission via satellite.
The commission is investigating how the Catholic Church, as well as other institutions, handled cases of sex abuse of children over a span of decades.
Pell was called to testify each night from around 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. about his time as a priest in Ballarat and an auxiliary bishop in Melbourne. The 74-year-old cardinal said that he was a junior priest at the time that an unnamed student at St. Patrick’s College reported that Christian Brothers teacher Edward Dowlan was “misbehaving with boys.”
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