A Melbourne newspaper says passport details prove Cardinal George Pell was studying in Oxford 46 years ago at the time a survivor of child sexual abuse says the Australian prelate, then a young priest, heard him plead for help a few weeks after being raped by a Christian Brother in the Victorian city of Ballarat.
The Herald Sun reported on 27 June that the Prefect of the Vatican's Secretariat for the Economy, a former Archbishop of Melbourne and later of Sydney, had given it access to a copy of his full passport, showing his travel in the 1960s and '70s.
"The passport makes it clear that Cardinal Pell was not in Australia in 1969," the paper said in a story headlined 'Pell's passport proves point'. The Herald Sun reported on Monday that Paul Lyons, 55, had challenged the cardinal to prove he was not in Ballarat at the time he told priests at St Alipius Presbytery of his rape.
"The travel documents now prove that Dr Pell was studying in Oxford at the time Mr Lyons has said he was brutally raped, at age 9, in St Alipius Primary School by Christian Brother teacher Robert Best," The “Herald Sun said.
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