Ballarat child sex abuse survivors who flew to Rome to hear Cardinal George Pell give evidence to a royal commission have been left deflated to hear their request to meet Pope Francis was never received.
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This is despite the group of clergy abuse victims making the request for a meeting with the pope through formal channels Monday.
Clergy abuse survivor Andrew Collins said the group sent an e-mail last week to the Rev. Mark Withoos, Cardinal George Pell’s personal secretary and at his recommendation, they then forwarded the request via fax to the Prefecture of the Papal office which organises the schedule of the Pope.
Mr Collins said the group had also been sending emails to Pope Francis's office requesting a meeting with leader of the Catholic Church, more than a month before they left Australia to head to Rome.
"It's very hard what to make of all of this," Mr Collins said.
"When we got to Rome, we were finally advised from Cardinal George Pell's office that we had to send a fax to Pope's office and we were given details of where to send this to which we followed. We then followed up the fax with an email."
Earlier this week they said they expressed serious doubts Cardinal Pell could help provide redress for survivors or change church systems to ensure such offending by clergy never happened again.
They made an impassioned plea to meet the pope instead.
But on Friday just hours before they were to return home, the group was informed in a statement from Cardinal Federico Lombardi's office that the request had not been received.
Mr Collins said the group felt the process of contacting the pope was deliberately obstructionist.
"I would like to think there is no malice behind it and while it's extremely disappointing at the end of day it hasn't dampened the experience for us," he said. "We have achieved so much while we are here, more than we could have ever imagined."
