Australian Cardinal George Pell has promised to work with a group of abuse survivors to help support healing and protection programmes and prevent suicide among victims.
“One suicide is too many. And there have been many such tragic suicides,” he said, continuing, “I commit myself to working with the group to try to stop this so that suicide is not seen as an option for those who are suffering.”
The cardinal had met with the survivors from his home town of Ballarat after a four-day series of videolink interviews with Australia’s Royal Commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse.
During the hearings, the cardinal, prefect of the Holy See’s Secretariat for the Economy, said Church leaders had “made enormous mistakes”, and told how when he heard from a student in 1974 that a local priest was “misbehaving with boys”, he informed the school principal of this but took no further action. Stressing that the student had not requested action be taken, he said he believed the action he had taken had not been enough. Other claims about him were refuted or otherwise rejected.
The cardinal said his meeting with survivors was “hard”, describing it as “an honest and occasionally emotional meeting”.
After the meeting, one of the abuse survivors, Phil Nagle, said “I think he gets it”.
