Cardinal George Pell knew of the activities of paedophile clerics in the Catholic archdiocese of Melbourne and the Ballarat diocese and should have taken stronger action according to unredacted (unedited) reports from the Royal Commission Into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse findings tabled in the Federal Parliament on Thursday, 7 May.

The commission findings which looked at child abuse allegations in the 1970s and 1980s were published in a redacted version in December 2017, to avoid prejudicing the trial of Cardinal Pell on charges of child sexual abuse.

Although initially found guilty, the charges against the cardinal were quashed in a unanimous High Court decision last month.

His acquittal enabled the release of the royal commission’s full and unredacted findings.

According to AAP and the ABC reports, the royal commission found that Cardinal Pell – who in 1989 was an Auxiliary Bishop and an adviser to Archbishop Frank Little of Melbourne -, should have called for the removal of parish priest Fr Peter Searson who was the subject of a abuse complaints and allegations in three parishes that he served over a 10-year period.

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Cardinal Pell had told the inquiry that he had been handed a list of allegations about the priest but said he believed that since  Catholic education officials and the archbishop were dealing with the allegations, he did not feel he could investigate the matter.

In its report, the commission stated that: “It was incumbent on Bishop Pell, as an Auxiliary Bishop with responsibilities for the welfare of the children in the Catholic community of his region, to take such action as he could to advocate that Father Searson be removed or suspended or, at least, that a thorough investigation be undertaken of the allegations.”

No charges were ever laid against Fr Searson who died in 2009.

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The commission rejected Cardinal Pell’s testimony that he had been deceived and lied to by church officials over the conduct of convicted paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale when he was a priest and adviser to the Bishop Ronald Mulkearns of Ballarat.

It rejected the cardinal’s claim that Bishop Mulkearns had lied to or deceived his advisers when he had Ridsdale removed from his parish at Mortlake because of abuse allegations. Cardinal Pell told the commission that the bishop did not give the true reason for the removal of Ridsdale from the parish.

The commission found that Bishop Mulkearns had not lied to his advisers and had not deceived them. Instead, the commission said the bishop had told them that it had been necessary to remove Ridsdale from the diocese because of complaints that he had abused children.

“Cardinal Pell’s evidence that ‘paedophilia was not mentioned’ and that the ‘true’ reason was not given is not accepted,” the commission said in its findings.

The commission also said that as a parish priest in the early 1970s, the cardinal had overlooked reports by students and priests of abuses committed by a Christian Brother, Ted Dowland, on students at St Patrick’s College in Ballarat.

“We are also satisfied that by 1973 Cardinal Pell was not only conscious of child sexual abuse by clergy but that he also had considered measures of avoiding situations which might provoke gossip about it,” the commission report said.