Cardinal George Pell testifies to the child sexual abuse royal commission from Rome, day three – live

The Guardian’s correspondent in Rome, Stephanie Kirchgaessner, has filed some analysis on the request from survivors of child sexual abuse to meet with Pope Francis in Rome;

Will he or won’t he? It is far from clear whether Pope Francis will meet with a group of abuse survivors who have come to Rome from Australia to witness Cardinal Pell’s testimony. The pope has met with survivors of sex abuse twice since he was elected pope in 2013: once in the Vatican and once on his trip last year to the US.

He has been criticised at times for not meeting more frequently with victims: he did not meet with victims on his recent trip to Mexico and he did not respond to a demand by a survivor, Peter Saunders, when Saunders was in Rome recently to attend a meeting of the pope’s special commission to develop policies to prevent and address clerical sexual abuse.

The pope is often seen as a man who disdains being pressured into any decision or being forced into a meeting due to media pressure. But the Catholic church is facing new scrutiny on several fronts: from questions about the adequacy of the church’s policy on when to report suspected abuse, to damaging revelations that have emerged about Cardinal Pell - and the questions he failed to ask - in his commission testimony, to a new report out of Pennsylvania about decades of alleged abuse of hundreds of children and attempts to cover-up the abuse.

If Pope Francis feels he needs to more forcefully address the abuse issue, a meeting with the survivors could be a good way to start.