Testimony angers church abuse victims

SYDNEY: Australian victims of child sex abuse in the Roman Catholic Church returned home yesterday disappointed they did not meet Pope Francis, and angry with the evidence a senior Vatican official gave to an inquiry investigating abuse.

The Vatican said it did not grant a meeting with the group of about 15 abuse victims because they had not made their request through the proper channels while they were in Rome to observe Cardinal George Pell testify.

Pell, now the Vatican’s treasurer, became the highest ranking official to testify on systemic abuse within the church. His evidence to the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse – on cases involving hundreds of children from the 1960s to ’90s – has taken on wider implications about the accountability of church leaders.

“The simple fact is that it’s the pope’s loss,” abuse survivor David Ridsdale said in Melbourne.”

Ridsdale and the other survivors had travelled to Rome to observe Pell give evidence via video link after a heart condition stopped the cardinal travelling to Sydney.

Ridsdale, who was abused as a child by his priest uncle, Gerald Ridsdale, said the victims faxed their request to Pell’s staff.

The cardinal was specifically asked about his knowledge of paedophile priests active in the Victorian city of Ballarat and surrounding regions. That included Gerald Ridsdale, who was convicted of 138 offences against more than 50 children in Australia.

While victims groups have rejected Pell’s responses as inadequate, Vatican chief spokesperson Federico Lombardi supported Pell.

“Cardinal Pell must be accorded the appropriate acknowledgement for his dignified and coherent personal testimony, from which yet again there emerges an objective and lucid picture of the errors committed in many ecclesial environments, this time in Australia, during the past decades,” Lombardi said in a statement posted on the Vatican website. – Reuters