The moment relaxed interview turned

THE first time George Pell heard the precise details of the allegations against him was during a filmed record of interview with police at the Hilton Hotel at Rome Airport.

Detectives had travelled to Rome two days ahead of the prearranged meeting on October 19, 2016, armed with serious allegations levelled at the Cardinal by a former choirboy.

Until then, Pell was aware he was under investigation but had been told few details about the case against him. Police needed Pell’s version of events before laying charges. Pell read a prepared statement at the outset of the interview. He volunteered to take part in a bid to kill off the laying of charges.

“I have to rely on the law and my conscience, which say that I’m innocent,” he said.

“I intend to (answer) all the questions asked of me.”

Dressed in his clerical uniform, all black with a collar, he was relaxed with police. They swapped pleasantries, Pell made a joke, they all laughed.

That changed when DetSgt Christopher Reed, the man that would ultimately lay charges against the Cardinal, told him for the first time that the choirboy had accused him of heinous crimes. “Oh stop it,” Pell scoffed.

“What a load of absolute and disgraceful rubbish. Completely false. Madness.”

That Pell had found the choirboys in the sacristy after Sunday mass drinking altar wine then abused each of them was, he said three times, “completely false”.

Pell had appeared vague about his memories of the Cathedral in the mid 1990s. It was, after all, 20 years prior and a world away from the Vatican he now called home.

But it all came back to him vividly when presented with the serious allegations.

“This is in the sacristy, at the Cathedral, after Sunday mass? Well, need I say anymore,” he told detectives.

“What a load of garbage and falsehood and deranged falsehood.” Pell said he would be able to easily prove the allegations were not just implausible, but impossible.

“For a start there would be hundreds of people present.

“The sacristy after mass was generally a hive of activity.”

Other claims were also unlikely, he said, particularly that the boys would have had access to altar wine, which was “always locked away” after mass.