George Pell and victims turn to Pope Francis for guidance

Clergy abuse victims and Cardinal George Pell have all turned to Pope Francis to shore up their ­respective positions.

Clergy abuse victims and Cardinal George Pell have turned to Pope Francis to shore up their ­respective positions as tensions flared in the genteel surrounds of the Hotel Quirinale yesterday.

While Cardinal Pell walked the red carpet of the marbled hotel lobby, insisting “I have the full support of the Pope’’, the survivors were so enraged at his “performance, not evidence’’ on day two of the hearing that they called for the Pope to review his suitability for his Vatican role.

“I personally think the Pope should question him on his inadequate role as a consulter and by extension how he is fulfilling his role now and in between those times,’’ said Ballarat victims’ group spokesman David Ridsdale, the abused nephew of ­notorious pedophile Gerald Ridsdale.

David Ridsdale, who has ­admitted to indecently assaulting a 12-year-old boy himself in 1984, said it was a matter for the Pope to decide if Cardinal Pell should stand down.

He noted that as a “consultor” Cardinal Pell did not fulfil any obligation to take matters further and, as detailed by his evidence, he accepted everything at face value.

There was little respite for Cardinal Pell even after the hearing. As he left the near-­deserted hotel in the early hours of the morning — after being stopped on the way out by ­Anthony Foster, the father of two girls abused by a priest — he was asked: “Did you tell the truth?’’ He replied: “Of course I did’’.

Two of Mr Foster’s daughters, Emma and Katie, were raped ­repeatedly by Catholic priest Kevin O’Donnell. Emma committed suicide years later, while Katie became permanently disabled from being hit by a car while drinking.

Earlier, members of the victims’ group gathered at the Rome hotel along with Paul Levey, the “presbytery boy’’ who was forced to live with Gerald Ridsdale for nearly 10 months, suffering daily assaults despite the knowledge of a bishop, senior priests and nuns.

Mr Levey stood at the side of the room, in clear view of Cardinal Pell, who gave evidence about the authority of canon law. “Because something is wrong you can’t wave a magic wand,’’ Cardinal Pell said of Mr Levey’s situation.

An earlier conciliatory tone by the victims hardened after counsel Gail Furness began to probe at the nub of the matter: that Cardinal Pell was at a meeting where Gerald Ridsdale’s ­future was discussed and he was “promoted’’ to a position in Sydney.

For victim Phillip Nagle, ­Cardinal Pell’s claim that he was ignorant of Gerald Ridsdale’s penchant for boys, and that he couldn’t recall details of the meeting except for an important point that “pedophilia wasn’t mentioned’’, did not sit well with the character of the man. “He has ­always been known as an ambitious man and ambitious men crave knowledge,’’ Mr Nagle said.

“They know everything that is going on and he wouldn’t be in the position he is in today if he was the person who sat back and didn’t pay attention to what was going on. I find that absolutely ridiculous.”

David Ridsdale added: “I think he threw a whole lot of people under the bus.’’

While the victims’ group has been scathing in its assessment, Cardinal Pell has attracted his own band of followers, nearly all wearing the clerical collar and sitting on the left of the hearing room. One Wollongong priest, Matthew de Battista, is finishing his final months of study in Rome and said he went to the hearing to support the cardinal and to understand the issues of child abuse.

Mr de Battista said the church needed to take care of the victims, “to face it squarely head-on’’.

But he had been impressed with how Cardinal Pell had stayed calm and direct, and put the church structures into their proper context. “His eminence took the commissioner and Ms Furness back to the context, it’s a country diocese, hundreds of kilometres apart,’’ Mr de Battista said. “It is not like priests would run into each other and say ‘Hey Jack, did you hear about Ridsdale?’”