Mulkearns, who died in April, was blamed for allowing paedophile priests to continue to operate in Victoria.

The late bishop left a reported $2.1m to be used by the current bishop of Ballarat for the benefit of the diocese "at his absolute discretion", according to the Herald Sun.

Ballarat's bishop, Paul Bird, said in a statement on Tuesday that the bequest would be used to help victims.

"Whatever the diocese of Ballarat receives from Bishop Mulkearns' estate, I intend to set aside for assistance to victims of abuse," Bird said. "This will continue the support that the diocese has given to abuse victims over many years." Read more

The move comes despite a commitment by the Australian Catholic Church not to subject victims of child sexual abuse to gruelling cross-examination.

Cardinal Pell denies the allegations against him concerning the period when he was a priest in Ballarat.

He has engaged Melbourne "mega-advocate" Allan Myers to test his accusers.

His legal representation will be separate from that of the Church.

A hearing by Australia's Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse regarding Catholic Church authorities in Ballarat will take place next month.

Cardinal Pell will return to Melbourne from Rome to give his evidence.

This will be the third time the cardinal has appeared before the royal commission.

Truth Justice and Healing Council head Francis Sullivan said while it was Church policy not to cross-examine victims, Cardinal Pell was in a different situation.

"The cardinal has obviously chosen separate legal representation because in the first part of the Ballarat hearings serious personal allegations have been made against him," he said.

"We, the council, fully support the fact that he will need to take the option of possibly having his lawyers cross examine that evidence.

"The royal commission has made it clear that in order for it to make appropriate findings all evidence needs to be put on the table and in order for that occur, individuals making allegations need to have their evidence tested directly."

In royal commission hearings in Melbourne this month, Pell's role as an auxiliary bishop in that archdiocese is to be scrutinised.

Sources

• Herald Sun
• ABC
• The Guardian
• Eureka Street
• Image: Catholic Sun

Cardinal Pell had been due to give evidence to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse at the second stage of the Ballarat hearings in November.

However, last week the commission said the hearings would be held in Melbourne's county court, citing logistical issues and a high level of public interest.

Abuse survivor Stephen Woods said he and many Ballarat victims are deeply upset by the decision.

They feel Cardinal Pell should front up in their community - his home town - and should apologise for the wrongdoing, including Church cover-ups.

Mr Woods said he believed the hearings had been moved because of concerns for Cardinal Pell's safety.

But Victorian police said the decision was entirely made by the royal commission and police advice was neither sought nor given.

The Ballarat and District Survivors Group said it was not consulted on the decision and called for the hearings to be held in their city.

Spokesman Andrew Collins said it was an important part of the community's healing process.

"The next step is to try and get the hearings moved to Ballarat or at least the bulk of the hearings here, otherwise it just won't have the same impact," he said.

At hearings in May in Ballarat, an allegation of attempted bribery was made against Cardinal Pell.

It was also alleged that he played a role in the moving of a paedophile priest from parish to parish.

Cardinal Pell later confirmed to the royal commission he would fly from Italy to Australia to attend the November Ballarat hearings.

The cardinal, who is prefect of the Vatican's secretariat for the economy, said he was horrified by the allegations against him.

In May, he denied these allegations and said he is committed to completely co-operate with the royal commission.

Cardinal Pell served as a young priest in Ballarat, before he was a made an auxiliary bishop of Melbourne in 1987.

Sources

• Guardian Australia
• ABC
• SkyNews
• Catholic Hierarchy
• Image: The Guardian

Archbishop Anthony Fisher told Crux that the cardinal has responded to most of these most recent charges several times before.

"People think he's indestructible, but I've sensed seeing him this time that it's getting to him," Archbishop Fisher said.

"It just goes on and on. No matter how many inquiries there are it just keeps coming back, and it gets a bit more vicious each time."

Archbishop Fisher predicted that Cardinal Pell will return to Australia later this year to face another round of interrogation by a royal commission.

He said it is possible the final report will contain "adverse findings" accusing Cardinal Pell of having failed to act appropriately.

It is unlikely there will be any criminal indictment against the cardinal, he said.

But there could be additional lawsuits as a result of the report, triggering what he called a "show trial" about Cardinal Pell's conduct.

Despite that, Archbishop Fisher predicted that Cardinal Pell will retain his position in Rome as prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy.

"In reality, he was the first bishop in the country to move on [confronting abuse scandals]," Archbishop Fisher said.

Cardinal Pell came under renewed media scrutiny during a recent royal commission hearing to horrific abuse cases in Ballarat in Victoria.

Some critics who've testified before the commission implied he had knowledge of abuse at the time but failed to report it, while others suggested he helped cover it up later as he began to climb the ecclesiastical ladder.

Cardinal Pell was born in Ballarat and served as a young priest there, as well as on the bishop's college of consultors for a period.

Archbishop Fisher noted that Cardinal Pell was never the bishop in Ballarat and had no direct responsibility for priests in the diocese.

Sources

• Crux
• Image: Perth Catholic

Paul Lyons, 55, was raped by Christian Brother Robert Best in 1969 and, a few weeks later, appealed to priests at St Alipius presbytery in Ballarat.

Mr Lyons had claimed Cardinal Pell, who was then a young priest, was among those who heard his complaint, but did nothing.

He had recently challenged the cardinal to provide details of his whereabouts in 1969.

Cardinal Pell provided his passport from the 1960s and 1970s to the Herald Sun, and it showed he was studying at Oxford that year.

Continue reading

Peter Saunders had previously called on the Pope to sack the cardinal, following accusations that resurfaced at a royal commission hearing in Ballarat.

Cardinal Pell has repeatedly denied claims that he moved a priest accused of abuse between parishes and bribed a victim to drop a complaint.

On Australia's Sixty Minutes programme last weekend, Mr Saunders accused Cardinal Pell of acting with callousness and being "almost sociopathic" in his lack of care.

Mr Saunders accused Cardinal Pell of "making a mockery of the papal commission, of the Pope himself, but most of all of the victims and the survivors".

Cardinal Pell's office issued a statement saying Mr Saunders' "false and misleading claims" were "outrageous", adding that Pell would consult legal advisers.

Mr Saunders later told the Australian Associated Press the pontifical commission he belongs to may not be able to do its job properly due to a lack of resources.

He said "the commission will largely be dictated to some extent by the resources that are made available to it . . . and my understanding is that there is some financial pressure already in this particular area and I'm pretty appalled at that".

Mr Saunders asked: " . . .[W]ho's in charge of funding and resources in the Vatican? You know the answer to that".

Cardinal Pell is prefect of the Vatican's economic secretariat.

Mr Saunders, who is an abuse survivor, also said it was "entirely possible" that Pope Francis didn't fully understand the history in Australia when he appointed Cardinal Pell to his current position.

Earlier, a Vatican spokesman stated Mr Saunders, a British victims' advocate, was speaking in a personal capacity and not as a member of the commission.

Australia's archbishops and several bishops released a statement defending Cardinal Pell as a man of integrity.

Jesuit Fr Frank Brennan, who has clashed with the cardinal in the past, called for fair treatment for him.

The royal commission has requested Cardinal Pell appear at a further hearing in Ballarat later this year, and the cardinal has agreed to do so.

Sources

• News.com
• The Tablet
• Yahoo News
• ABC
• SBS
• CWN
• Image: The Guardian

We naturally want to know the full extent of the cardinal's knowledge about the paedophile priest Gerald Risdale. And justice - natural, and divine - demands Pell give the commission and the public the full story.

Yet whether we like it or not, the royal commission is not a court conducting a criminal trial. Nor is it an inquiry into George Pell.

Whether you conceive of the Cardinal as the Great Satan or a priest ahead of his time in dealing with child abuse (a view that is still prevalent among Catholics), litigating his personality on 60 Minutes or through Gerard Henderson's nuggets of pedantry in the Australian does little to deliver justice for victims.

Of course, when the powerful refuse to humble themselves, stripping them of their mystique is a kind of justice in and of itself.

Yet the cardinal's reputation can hardly fall more in the eyes of the Australian public and among some sections of the church.

As an observer of the commission and as a Christian, what I want to see is an acknowledgement that the situation has begun to change. Two years into the commission's work, will anyone admit Pell is no longer the biggest obstacle to justice for victims?

The reluctance to do so is pervasive on either side of the divide: the cardinal's defenders barely know how to do anything else but fight rearguard actions; and his critics want to see Pell caught out in a lie, or a smoking gun document produced. Continue reading

• Adam Brereton is the opinion editor of Guardian Australia.

Abuse victims have called on Cardinal Pell to give evidence to the inquiry to answer questions about the Church's response to the abuse.

"So far I have not been asked to give evidence in any form, but as I have said repeatedly, I am deeply committed to assisting the royal commission and to doing anything I can to help survivors," Cardinal Pell said in a statement.

There have been harrowing accounts from survivors of abuse and there have also been reports of multiple suicides of victims.

Cardinal Pell's evidence could be heard at a second round of hearings in Ballarat later this year.

He testified by video link at a royal commission hearing in August last year.

The hearings in Ballarat have heard testimony that Cardinal Pell tried to bribe a victim and ignored another.

From Rome, the cardinal repeated previous denials of wrongdoing.

This week, the commission heard testimony by video link from notorious paedophile ex-priest Gerard Ridsdale.

Speaking from prison, Ridsdale said he never had much to do with Pell, despite the two sharing a presbytery in East Ballarat in the 1970s.

This was during a time when Ridsdale was raping boys from St Alpius School in Ballarat.

Ridsdale said he didn't discuss his offending with Pell, but admitted sharing meals with him and generally chatting.

Cardinal Pell, who is now the prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy at the Vatican, has repeatedly denied any knowledge of Ridsdale's abuse prior to 1993.

The commission also heard that Pell was present at a September 1982 meeting involving three other senior clerics - including then-Bishop Ronald Mulkearns - who had all received complaints about Ridsdale's behaviour towards children.

At the meeting there was a discussion about removing Ridsdale from the Victorian town of Mortlake - where he has since admitted abusing more than 50 children - and moving him to Sydney.

The Age newspaper issued an unreserved apology to Cardinal Pell after "Die Pell" appeared above a photo of him on its Facebook page.

Sources

• ABC
• The Age
• Sky News
• Herald Sun
• ABC
• Daily Telegraph
• The Age
• Image: Sydney Morning Herald

In a statement, Cardinal Pell renewed his rejection of claims that he helped move paedophile Fr Gerald Ridsdale between parishes and tried to pay one of the victims to remain quiet.

He also denied ignoring 40 years ago another victim's claim that a now-convicted sex offender was abusing children at a college in Ballarat.

Victims had been speaking at a hearing in Ballarat of Australia's Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Royal commission chair Justice Peter McClellan said on Wednesday that Cardinal Pell would be required to respond to the allegations.

Cardinal Pell, now finance chief at the Vatican, released a statement later that night.

The cardinal stated he had already addressed many of the claims levelled against him in a Victorian parliamentary inquiry in 2013, and he stood by those statements.

"These matters again require an immediate response and it is important to correct the record, particularly given the false and misleading headlines."

In evidence at the royal commission in Ballarat on Wednesday, David Ridsdale told of being abused by his uncle, Fr Gerald, from when he was 11.

Mr Ridsdale said he called then-Bishop Pell to tell him about the abuse in February, 1993.

But he said Cardinal Pell asked him "what it will take to keep you quiet" and also talked about the things he will need to buy for his growing family, such as a car.

Mr Ridsdale told the hearing: "I have never stated that Pell offered me anything specific or tangible in our conversation, only that his attempts to direct the conversation down a particular path made me extremely suspicious of his motivations and what he was insinuating."

A lawyer for the Church at the hearing said Cardinal Pell remembered the conversation differently.

Cardinal Pell added that he had been "horrified once again" by survivors' accounts of abuse, describing the suicide of so many victims as an enormous tragedy and the crimes committed against them as "profoundly evil and completely repugnant".

Sources

• Sydney Morning Herald
• The Guardian
• ABC
• Image: The Independent

They accuse Bishop Ronal Mulkearns and the Diocese of Ballarat of negligence for allegedly failing to protect them and other victims, despite being aware of complaints against Fr Gerard Ridsdale.

Ridsdale was convicted in 2014 of 34 charges against children between 1961 and 1980.

He had also been convicted in 1993, 1994 and 2006 for a string of other child sex offences.

Ridsdale was parish priest at Inglewood in 1975 when local police informed Bishop Mulkearns that Ridsdale had abused children.

Bishop Mulkearns sent Ridsdale away for counselling and then on to the next parish.

In the intervening years, Ridsdale made dozens of other children his victims.

The lawyer representing the victims, Viv Waller said: "I think it's quite possible that Gerald Ridsdale is Victoria's worst career paedophile."

Bishop Mulkearns was excused from appearing at the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into Church Abuse in 2013 after a neuropsychological examination.

The current Bishop of Ballarat, Paul Bird, did attend and admitted the decision to keep Ridsdale in the priesthood in 1975 was wrong.

Ms Walker said the case was unprecedented because it bypassed the Catholic Church's so-called "Ellis defence" - where the Church cannot be sued because, technically, it does not exist as a legal entity.

Meanwhile, Fairfax Media revealed that despite a Church promise to abandon the "Ellis defence", some dioceses and religious orders are not prepared to publicly commit to that.

Fairfax Media requested a formal undertaking from nine dioceses and religious orders that they would no longer employ the "Ellis defence" in current and future sex abuse lawsuits.

None of the organisations were willing to issue a formal statement confirming that position.

It is understood that a dispute between church organisations and their insurers has become a major impediment to implementing a policy to abandon the "Ellis defence".

Australia's Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse is starting a three-week hearing into decades of horrific abuse in Ballarat diocese.

Sources

• ABC
• Sydney Morning Herald
• The Courier
• Image: The Courier

When young Father George Pell moved his things into the presbytery in 1973, that corner of Ballarat was one of the most dangerous places in Australia for children. Already living in the presbytery was Father Gerald Ridsdale, chaplain at the little primary school standing on the other side of the church. He was raping the children. All four members of the staff, all Christian Brothers, were abusing the children in the school. They would not be exposed for twenty years. George Pell, back from his studies in Rome and Oxford, noticed nothing.

Ballarat was his town. His parents owned the Royal Oak. George Sr. was huge, down-to-earth and Protestant. Lil was fierce, gentle and made all the decisions that mattered in her son's life. She was devoted to the Catholic Church. A portrait of old Daniel Mannix, archbishop of Melbourne since 1917, hung in her kitchen. Her son would one day write: "She was a woman of great strength and faith: a faith I suspect that was very Irish, and probably in particular a faith typical of the west of Ireland in its certainties and in its impatience with theological subtleties." The pub was working-class but not rough. George Sr. ran an SP bookmaking operation out of the front bar and hid the books under his children's beds. He enforced the rules. Children brought up in a pub learn to tolerate all sorts and to value rules. Once they were teenagers, young George and his sister Margaret helped out in the bar in the school holidays but their mother was preparing her children for a life that would take them a long way from the Royal Oak.

Though raised Catholic from birth - tribal Catholic in a town where priests, nuns and brothers ruled the Catholic roost - Lil's big, confident boy had a conversion in adolescence that determined the course of his spiritual life and the trajectory of his career. At the age of fourteen he fell under the spell of B.A. Santamaria:

"As a teenager, probably in 1955, I first heard him talk to a packed cathedral hall in Ballarat on the menace of communism. He set out to identify the mighty forces under the swirl of events. He often appealed to history. We felt we too belonged to the forces of good fighting the new faces of evil, as saints and heroes had done for thousands of years. He placed us in a grand tradition of worthy struggle and combat, where we felt we could do our bit. Some of us never completely lost this conviction." Continue reading

Sources

• ABC Religion and Ethics
• Image: news.com.au