Two men have told Victoria Police they were abused as children by the cardinal when he was a priest in Ballarat in the 1970s.
They have gone public with their stories on ABC’s 7:30, claiming he groped them while they swam at Ballarat’s Eureka Pool during the summer of 1978-79.
But in a response from Rome, the cardinal said: “I have done nothing wrong”.
He called for an investigation into alleged leaks of information from Victoria Police to the ABC and whether there was a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.
The two accusers, now in their 40s, gave statements to Victoria Police’s special child exploitation task force Sano last year.
Lyndon Monument said Cardinal Pell would play games with many of the boys while in the pool, throwing them in and out of the water, but allegedly also brushing against their genitals.
“That slowly became hand down your pants, or your bathers or whatever you call them … under the water,” Monument claimed.
Classmate Danian Dignan told 7:30 he didn’t feel Cardinal Pell’s actions were accidental.
The two men alleged he would also often change in front of them.
But the cardinal, who is the Pope’s finance chief at the Vatican, said any claims of abuse against him were “totally untrue and completely wrong”.
In his statement he said the allegations were “nothing more than a scandalous smear campaign which appears to be championed by the ABC”.
“I bear no ill will and have no desire to cause them (the accusers) harm but what they say about me is not true,” the cardinal said.
The statement said there had been no requests made by Sano to interview the cardinal and the Victorian Police Commissioner confirmed last month that no request to interview him had been proposed to him as necessary.
It said there appeared to have been “improper and illegal” leaking of allegations by elements of the Victorian Police to the ABC.
“The cardinal calls for an investigation to assess whether any actions of elements of the Victoria Police and the ABC program amount to a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice,” the statement said.
Archbishop of Sydney Anthony Fisher said in a statement early today that the allegations needed to be investigated in a way that afforded all parties natural justice.
“No one is served when such due process is replaced with trial by media,” he said.
Archbishop Fisher said the cardinal had a record of leadership in the fight against child sexual abuse and “the allegations aired on the ABC do not correspond with the George Pell I know”.
-AAP
