ROME
Daily Mail
By Press Association
A senior Vatican cardinal charged in Australia with multiple historical sexual offences has denied the accusations and denounced what he called a “relentless character assassination” in the media.
Cardinal George Pell, Pope Francis’s chief financial adviser and Australia’s most senior Catholic, said he would take a leave of absence as the Vatican’s finance tsar and would return to Australia to fight the charges.
Pell is the highest-ranking Vatican official charged in the church’s long-running sexual abuse scandal.
Deputy Commissioner Shane Patton of Victoria state police said officers have summonsed Pell to appear in court to face multiple charges of historical sexual assault offences.
Mr Patton gave no other details of the allegations, and Pell was ordered to appear at Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on July 18.
Pell, 76, has for years faced allegations that he mishandled cases of clergy abuse when he was archbishop of Melbourne and then Sydney, but more recently, he became the focus of a sex abuse investigation himself, with Victoria detectives flying to the Vatican last year to interview him.
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