A conciliatory Cardinal George Pell was on show

The Diocese of Ballarat may be 58,000sq km in size, bordering NSW and South Australia and covering all of western Victoria, but word still travelled quickly enough on the bush telegraph.

George Pell conceded yesterday that even as a young priest serving the communities of Swan Hill on the Murray River and ­Ballarat in central Victoria he had heard rumours and even read about offending clergy.

This would not normally be that significant, given the diocese contained some of the worst Catholic abusers in the world.

However, the perception ­fuelled by Pell until yesterday has been that he knew virtually nothing about the diocesan offending because 40 years ago he was too junior and did not discuss the ­affairs of other clergy. Instead, we discovered yesterday that the cardinal knew about a kissing teacher who swam naked with students, was told of some of the antics of a notorious Christian Brother who abused many, was aware of things being awry at St Patrick’s College in Ballarat and had read that Monsignor Day in Mildura — 230km down the road from Swan Hill — may have been abusing children.

There are multiple layers of significance in these concessions.

The first is that the commission has focused in hearings on the weight of priestly gossip, pointing to the inevitability that the clergy must have heard about the problem of sex abuse.

While Pell was relatively junior, he was eventually one of a committee of consultors who were informed when priests were to be moved and was present when the notorious pedophile Gerald Ridsdale was shifted.

The obvious question is what did Pell do about the offending, regardless of his relatively lowly status, and how did this knowledge inform the way he ­responded when he rose through the ranks of the Archdiocese of Melbourne? To that end, it is clear that the royal commission is building its case against Pell in a couple of ways.

First, the plausibility of his ­denials of knowing about the ­antics of Ridsdale — an abuser of probably hundreds of children. Second, how that knowledge gleaned in Ballarat was used in Melbourne; we now know that by the time he became an auxiliary bishop in Melbourne he knew what the clergy was capable of.

For most of yesterday’s hearing, Pell was an impressive witness, well versed in the detail and remarkably frank.

While the electronic media picked up on, and accentuated, his inability to remember some events, Pell lacked the defensiveness of past public appearances.

On show was a conciliatory cardinal who looked very much like he was telling the truth.

Some image-softening is going on here.

Even his harshest critics among the victims seemed to take some solace.

At the same time, though, it seems increasingly likely that the commission will be critical in its final report of Pell.