A survivor, known as BWE, told a royal commission on Monday that he overheard then-Father Pell speaking to parish priest Father Frank Madden in the sacristy at St Patrick's Cathedral in Ballarat while he prepared to serve as an altar boy for a funeral mass in 1983. BWE said Father Madden had asked Father Pell 'How's everything your way?' and that he responded by saying, 'Ha ha I think Gerry's been rooting boys again'."

Father Madden, a former Horsham priest, rejected the account to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on Wednesday, saying, "Absolutely not ... I find that totally impossible. I didn't co-celebrate a requiem mass with George Pell in the cathedral ever."

While he was not close to Cardinal Pell, Father Madden said he had "never used that kind of language … I  can't imagine him using that kind of expression."

Father Madden was a member of a group of senior priests called the College of Consultors between 1979 and 1982. The group advised Ballarat Bishop Ronald Mulkearns​ on the appointments of priests. Father Madden said they only offered "very limited" advice to the Bishop. He could not remember discussions they had had at meetings about Ridsdale's movements between various parishes.

Father Eric Bryant, who was a consultor in the 1980s and is the current priest in Stawell, disputed this, saying that Bishop Mulkearns’ common practice was to consult with the group on where clergy were placed.

At his first meeting in September 1982, Father Bryant recalled Bishop Mulkearns announcing that Ridsdale was to be sent to the Catholic Enquiry Centre in Sydney. "He came in and I remember him saying, 'We have a problem with homosexuality' and he referred to Ridsdale … but there was no discussion whatsoever. Not a word more except that he had to move Ridsdale."

Father Bryant said he did not ask any questions or discuss this with the other priests, but may have if the word "paedophilia" had been used. While other priests were known to be homosexual at the time, none had been moved because of it.

"I suppose in a sense I was young and naive and I knew the possibility of those things but [had not] thought it was going to happen in your own patch your own parish at that stage."

Father Bryant would not agree with counsel assisting the commission, Angus Stewart, SC, that this meant Bishop Mulkearns had lied to the consultors, only that he did not tell them "the full truth".

Mr Stewart said: "Either he told the truth, which was to say there was a problem of child abuse or if he didn't then it was a failure …"

Father Bryant replied: "I would accept that."

In the mid-'80s, Father Bryant began to hear about Ridsdale abusing children, and warned one parent who was friends with him to keep his children away. He said he regretted not issuing a broader warning.

Ridsdale was demoted to become an assistant priest to Father Madden in Horsham in 1983, where he went on to abuse children.

Father Madden told Catholic Church Insurance in an interview in 1993 that at that stage: "I knew that he had been in some sort of trouble, but I was not told what had occurred and I really did not want to know."

But he told the commission on Wednesday that he did not find out about Ridsdale's offending until he confessed it to him years later. He had suspected the "trouble" was depression not child abuse and did not think Ridsdale was sent to him for supervision.

Yet Father Bryant said that Bishop Mulkearns sent Ridsdale to him because he "didn't want him alone in a parish".

This story originally appeared at www.theage.com