Cardinal admits 'scandalous' response to abuse allegations

[webfact]

Cardinal admits 'scandalous' response to abuse allegations
By NICOLE WINFIELD and ROD McGUIRK

ROME (AP) — One of Pope Francis' top advisers acknowledged that the Catholic Church "has made enormous mistakes" in allowing thousands of children to be raped and molested by priests over centuries as he testified at an extraordinary public hearing of an Australian investigative commission just a few blocks from the Vatican.

Australian Cardinal George Pell testified via videolink for four hours from Sunday night to early Monday morning from a Rome hotel to the Royal Commission sitting in Sydney. In the front row of the conference room were two dozen Australian abuse survivors and their companions, who had traveled across the globe to witness Pell's testimony, a significant show of accountability in the church's long-running abuse saga.

The lead counsel assisting the commission, Gail Furness, questioned Pell about current Vatican efforts to address the scandal as well as Pell's past in Australia, including how he dealt with abuse allegations as a priest, educator and adviser to former Ballarat Bishop Ronald Mulkearns.

Pell asserted at the start: "I'm not here to defend the indefensible. The church has made enormous mistakes and is working to remedy those." He said the church had "mucked things up and let people down" and for too long had dismissed credible abuse allegations "in absolutely scandalous circumstances."

He dubbed Mulkearns' handling of Australia's most notorious pedophile priest, Gerald Ridsdale, a "catastrophe for the church" and suggested that he would be a candidate for a proposed Vatican tribunal to hear the cases of negligent bishops. But Pell also acknowledged that he too had made mistakes in often believing the priests over victims who alleged abuse.

"I must say in those days, if a priest denied such activity, I was very strongly inclined to accept the denial," he said.

It's the third time that Pell, Pope Francis' top financial adviser, has testified about the abuse scandal, but the current round has generated intense international attention because it is taking place near the Vatican. Attendees included media from Australia, the U.S., Italy, and Britain, as well as Rome-based priests and members of the Catholic community.

The commission, which is more than halfway through a 435 million Australian dollar ($300 million) government-authorized probe into how Australian institutions dealt with abuse, agreed to let Pell testify from Rome because he was too ill to travel. It also agreed to let victims attend to create the type of public hearing that Pell would have faced in Australia.

David Ridsdale, who was abused by his uncle, Gerald Ridsdale, said victims in recent days had conducted more than 100 media interviews before Pell testified — and was grateful that the horror of what transpired in Ballarat was finally getting attention outside of Australia. Gerald Ridsdale is in prison after being convicted of multiple counts of abuse.

The deeply Catholic city in Australia's Victoria state has been devastated by disclosures about the huge number of abuse victims, scores of whom killed themselves in a cluster of abuse-related suicides unseen anywhere else.

David Ridsdale said Ballarat's survivors wanted Pell to "stand up and take responsibility on behalf of the church" for what transpired in Pell's own hometown.

"We're here to seek the truth. We're here to heal our city," David Ridsdale said. "We have the highest suicide rate among men in Australia. We have some of the worst drinking and violence problems. And it all stems from that abuse."

Midway through the first of an expected three to four nights of testimony, Ridsdale seemed unimpressed by Pell's admission of the church's failings.

"Words are one thing. Actions are another," he said, in calling for a church-funded compensation scheme that addresses the fact that many survivors are too traumatized by their abuse to support themselves financially.

The hearings relate to Ballarat and how the Melbourne archdiocese responded to allegations of abuse, including when Pell served as a Melbourne auxiliary bishop.

Pell was ordained a priest in Ballarat in 1966 and was a consultant to Mulkearns, who moved Gerald Ridsdale between parishes for years.

During the opening address at a Royal Commission hearing in Ballarat last week, the lawyer assisting the commissioner said that as a consultant, Pell would have been responsible for giving advice to the bishop on the appointments of priests to parishes.

Pell has long denied allegations that he was involved in transferring Gerald Ridsdale — with whom he once lived at the Ballarat presbytery — and said he never tried to buy the silence of Ridsdale's nephew, as he alleges. Pell said he had no suspicions that Gerald Ridsdale was a deviant.

Pell has also repeatedly denied accusations that during his time as an assistant priest in Ballarat, he ignored warnings about Christian Brother Edward Dowlan, an abusive teacher at St. Patrick's College. Under questioning from Furness, Pell said he had heard "one or two fleeting references" to "misbehavior" by Dowlan in the 1970s "which I concluded might have been pedophilia activity."

But Pell, who had attended the same school decades earlier, said he had not known victims' names, that there were large numbers of victims or that Dowlan's offending was general knowledge at the school.

Dowlan was sentenced to six years in prison last year for abusing 20 boys.

Pell also testified that had had been aware of a Christian Brother named Leo Fitzgerald who swam naked with students and said he had been told by parishioners that Fitzgerald also had a habit of kissing boys. But Pell said he had not believed the kissing to be sexual.

"It was certainly unusual, but ... nobody said we've got to do something about this," Pell said.

Pell's acknowledgement that he knew about such behaviors is the closest he has publicly come to stating that he had even tangential awareness of the scandal playing out in Ballarat. His concession came as Furness presented evidence that many people around Pell knew about the abuse.

"The sexual offending by Christian Brothers at St. Alipius school and St. Pat's school was known by a significant number in the community — would you agree with that?" Furness asked Pell.

"I would agree that it was known to all the people whom you've mentioned and they do constitute a significant number," Pell replied.

In a statement Sunday, Pell repeated his support for the commission's work, vowed to meet individually with victims who had travelled to Rome and said he hoped the coming days "will eventually lead to healing for everyone."

He said he had tied a yellow ribbon on the fence in the Our Lady of Lourdes Grotto in the Vatican Gardens in a show of solidarity with the "Loud Fence" movement launched in Ballarat to support survivors of abuse.

Pell has defended his response to the abuse scandal while a bishop and later the archbishop of Melbourne, though he has expressed regret over encounters with victims seeking compensation, saying he and others in the church failed in their moral and pastoral responsibilities to them.

Anthony Foster testified at an earlier inquiry that when he and his wife sought compensation over the abuse their daughters suffered, Pell showed a "sociopathic lack of empathy."

Their eldest daughter was repeatedly raped by priest Kevin O'Donnell and committed suicide. Her younger sister was raped by the same priest and began binge drinking. One day while intoxicated, she was struck by a car and is now severely disabled.

Foster said it was "astounding and empowering for victims" that the commission was now sitting in judgment of Pell on a global stage.

"I feel as though we haven't just brought it to Rome. We've brought it to the world," Foster said. "This is to some extent showing the rest of the world how it can be done."

The Royal Commission adjourned at 2:30 a.m. on Monday Rome time (0130 GMT), to suit the Australian time zone. It will resume at 10:30 p.m.

The commission has no power to file criminal charges. But commissioners can note in their report whether they believe someone has broken the law and refer the matter to police and prosecutors.

McGuirk reported from Canberra, Australia. AP writer Kristen Gelineau contributed from Sydney.


-- (c) Associated Press 2016-02-29

[shirtless]

Message to Pope the robes dont make your priests holier than holy, clean your stinking religion up you are parasitic and should be forced to pay tax or huge damages to those that were abused.

[HerbalEd]

Besides the priests who actually did the sexual abuse, there are many church officials who should be arrested, tried and sent to prison because they hid the truth. But, alas, most will get away with what is not only a great sin, but is highly illegal.

I think this true-life horror story has been going on for many centuries, and is a testament to how f...ed up are the Catholic Church and it's practice of celibacy.

The Catholic Church draws many sick sexual deviants, just as the police force draws many thugs. Actually I think most priests and police are good people, but many are sick and should never be allowed in.

[up2u2]

Pell sanctioned and protected priests who raped children. When priests were known to be raping children in the most cruel way Pell simply moved them to another area where they continued to abuse more victims. He used political power and wealth to attack those that dared speak out in an effort to protect the wealth of the church. He should not be behind the walls of the Vatican he should be behind the walls of a prison. There are allegations that Pell himself abused children and is under investigation.

A truly, truly despicable person. It is a shame hell is only fictional.

[peterpop]

The Roman Catholic Church should be a banned organisation and compared in every way to the excesses of radical Islam. Religions are the cause of so much harm.

[jerome2]

Thousands of children raped over centuries... !!!!

Lets say 250.000 at least with africa over the LAST century

and what about the hundreds orfans disposed of or wacked in 1 irish institution

[arjunadawn]

The Roman Catholic Church should be a banned organisation and compared in every way to the excesses of radical Islam. Religions are the cause of so much harm.

After decades of these stories of predation of course the OP invites commentary on the underlying disease; the sexual abuse is just the symptoms.

This is roughly the thread I wished to pull from this timely OP. I just finished watching "Spotlight" just hours ago. This is a movie about Catholic priest/institutional sexual abuse whereas the priest's actions were not the only interest of the News reporters chasing the story, rather the complicity of the Catholic Church in managing and covering up the sexual abuses of their clergy. While people like me are often quick to note the sexual excesses those of other religion are known to act out, rarely does the issue present itself less violently and so clearly with another religion. Lets be frank, these issues present decade after decade in the world because religion is afforded some semi opaque status where it exercises impunity.

Not sure any church or religion should be banned, but I also don't think its necessary they continue to have special accommodation. Religions should be afforded no more capital in modern society than the Freemasonry, GLADD, MAD, Gold Star Moms, Knights of Columbus, etc. It is disgusting in 2016 that religions, imams, priests, popes, vicars, etc., should be afforded less circumspection than another because they believe a man in the clouds condones their righteous worldview, or they've been around a really long time. An anachronism, religion should be earnestly relegated to the personal, and removed from modern international dialogue.

Religion has wrought primarily violence upon the world. While the Church is not the only institution in which such scandals occur they all share the sick status of absolving such atrocities in the furtherance of their fairly tales. Abuses are characterized as reinforcing the rightness of their quest, that man is frail and liable to desire, and sin, and the fall. Instead of seeing the injured as primary, the constancy of molding the appearance of their faith is the objective. However, at least with the Catholic Church they never developed entire doctrines based on sexually objectifying children and women for pleasure. At least when forced to scripturaly confront their horrors no Catholic has recourse to god or revealed mandate as at least one other religion can.

Religion divorces Man from his Natural Estate as a integral part of nature and mandates an artificial separation, repression. The dualist foundation of western religion will always have Man and object, a chain of being, and the material world as tempting, sinful, and desirous.

[Scott]

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