Vatican cardinal denies attempts to cover up child sex abuse

A high ranking Vatican official on Thursday admitted that he had knowledge of, at least, one priest who misbehaved with boys at an Australian school.

Cardinal George Pell, the Vatican’s treasurer, however, said that he did nothing when a boy at a Christian Brothers school in rural Victoria State mentioned the priest’s behaviour casually in conversation in the mid-1970s.

He regretted not acting on the information, saying that he would have done more to stop sexual abuse of children in the Catholic Church.

“With the experience of 40 years later, certainly, I would agree that I should have done more,” Pell said while giving evidence via video link from Rome to Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Response to Child Sexual Abuse.

The four-day questioning over cases involving hundreds of children in Australia from the 1960s to the 1990s has taken wider implications about the accountability of church leaders, given Pell’s high rank within the church.

There were audible gasps when, during a testy exchange earlier in the week, Pell said of abuse by a priest who was later convicted of 138 offences against 53 victims.

“It’s a sad story and it wasn’t of much interest to me,” he said.

He said that he regretted the comment, which was seized by victims and the Australian media as evidence of the Catholic Church’s uncaring attitude.

“I was very confused, I responded poorly, it was badly expressed,” Pell said on the last day of the hearing, which required him to give evidence late at night through to the early hours.

He told the commission that the church made mistakes and “catastrophic choices” by refusing to believe abused children, shuffling the priests from parish to parish, and over-relying on counselling of priests to solve the problem.