Cardinal Pell & Australian child abuse

"I didn't want a punch-up that made things worse for the church and for them," he said.

Pell said paedophilia was a broader societal issue, but admitted there had been a "disproportionate amount" within the Catholic church in the past. "We have to plead guilty to that," he said.

He said failure to protect children from paedophiles within the church in both Melbourne and Ballarat was "colossal failure of leadership" by those above him but excused himself as having no "real power" or knowledge at the time to act.

Pell also addressed the most controversial moment of the four day hearing where he said the "sad story" of abuse by Ridsdale "wasn't of much interest" to him when he first heard it.

In a convoluted explanation of the "bad slip", Pell said that in the 1990s, after he had left Ballarat, he "never liked reading in detail about these matters".

"Things that were professionally necessary to know, I was completely ready to study them," he said. "To suggest from that bad slip that I was somehow uninterested in the issue is completely contradicted by the whole of my life."