Pedophile priest Gerald Francis Ridsdale had an established pattern of finding victims, befriending their families and setting up drop-in centres to trap vulnerable young boys.
Ridsdale on Wednesday gave evidence before the child sex abuse royal commission's Ballarat inquiry.
He said abused children while he was studying to be a priest in the seminary, with the first complaint made in the first year after he was ordained in 1961.
By the time he had moved between parishes and ended up in Ballarat East in the early 1970s, Ridsdale had established a pattern of offending.
"It's obvious now to me that a pattern would have been, or a way of seeking victims, would have been to look for the vulnerable or to recognise the vulnerable, but not always vulnerable or poor ones," Ridsdale told the commission via videolink from jail on Wednesday.
Ridsdale read out what he told a Catholic Church Insurances investigator in 1994 of his time as parish priest in Inglewood in 1975.
"I was out of control, really out of control in those years.
"I had a pool table and it was just known that anyone who wanted to come was welcome and play pool.
"There is no sense in pretending, I suppose, because if there was any kind of good motive about it being a drop-in centre but it was the trap.
"Yes, I can see that now."
Victims are disappointed the first day of Ridsdale's testimony revealed very few details about who in the church knew of his offending and moved him from parish to parish.
Lawyer and Monash University doctoral researcher Judy Courtin, who has worked with Ballarat victims, said she was gobsmacked over Ridsdale's lack of memory of anything to do with the church hierarchy.
"He's 81. He'll probably die in prison. What has he got to lose? It's just extraordinary," she told reporters.
Ridsdale has been in jail since 1994, convicted in four separate court cases of abusing more than 50 children.
He was handed an effective sentence of 28 years' jail and will be 88 when the sentence ends.
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