Australian cardinal didn't quickly act on pedophile claim
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}
A senior Vatican official has told an Australian sex abuse inquiry that he did not immediately act when a boy raised abuse allegations against a cleric in the 1970s and should have done more.
Australian Cardinal George Pell, Pope Francis' top financial adviser, gave evidence on Thursday for a fourth day to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse from a Rome hotel a short distance from the Vatican.
Pell told the inquiry in Sydney via videolink from Rome that he was a priest in the Australian city of Ballarat in 1974 when an unnamed student at St. Patrick's College told him that Christian Brothers teacher Edward Dowlan "is misbehaving with boys."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}
Asked by commission chairman Peter McClellan what he did about it, Pell replied: "I didn't do anything about it."