Australia’s former top Catholic cleric, now Pope Francis’ finance chief, yesterday denied trying to bribe a victim of a pedophile priest to keep quiet as an inquiry heard of horrifying abuse.
Cardinal George Pell spoke out as abuse survivors demanded he return to Australia to give evidence to a royal commission on the allegations.
David Ridsdale, who was abused from age 11 by his uncle Gerald Ridsdale, a notorious pedophile priest now in jail, told the commission on Wednesday that he confided in family friend Pell about the sexual assaults in 1993.
Photo: AFP
He alleged that Pell, who was appointed by Pope Francis in February last year to make the Vatican’s finances more transparent, went on to ask what it would cost to buy his silence.
The cardinal was also accused of helping to move the disgraced priest between parishes.
Pell said he had been following the proceedings and was “horrified once again by survivors’ accounts of the abuse they have suffered,” but denied trying to bribe David Ridsdale or his family or “offer any financial inducements for him to be silent.”
“Over the last 24 hours, I have been accused of being complicit in the moving of a known pedophile, of ignoring a victim’s complaint and of bribery,” he said in a statement. “These matters again require an immediate response and it is important to correct the record, particularly given the false and misleading headlines.”
Pell, who is not accused of any sexual abuse, said at the time of the discussion the police were already aware of allegations against Gerald Ridsdale and were investigating.
“Then, and now, I supported these police investigations. I have previously made a sworn denial of these allegations and I reiterate that denial,” he added. “I never moved Ridsdale out of Mortlake Parish. I never moved him anywhere. I would never have condoned or participated in a decision to transfer Ridsdale in the knowledge that he had abused children.”
Pell gave evidence in March last year to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which was called after a decade of pressure to investigate wide-ranging allegations of pedophilia in Australia.
The commission has heard harrowing allegations of child abuse involving places of worship, orphanages, community groups and schools.
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