Australia charges cardinal in abuse

FILE - In this May 1, 2011 file photo, Cardinal George Pell, left, reads a bible during the blessing of a statue of John Paul ll at St Mary's Cathedral in Sydney, Australia. Australian police say they are charging Pell with historical sexual assault offenses. (AP Photo/Rob Griffith, File)
FILE - In this May 1, 2011 file photo, Cardinal George Pell, left, reads a bible during the blessing of a statue of John Paul ll at St Mary's Cathedral in Sydney, Australia. Australian police say they are charging Pell with historical sexual assault offenses. (AP Photo/Rob Griffith, File)

SYDNEY -- Australian police charged a top Vatican cardinal this morning with multiple counts of sexual assault offenses.

Cardinal George Pell, Pope Francis' chief financial adviser and Australia's most senior Catholic, is the highest-ranking Vatican official to ever be charged in the church's long-running sexual abuse scandal.

Victoria state Police Deputy Commissioner Shane Patton said police have summonsed Pell to appear in an Australian court to face multiple charges of "historical sexual assault offenses," meaning offenses that generally occurred some time ago. Patton said there are multiple complainants against Pell, but gave no other details on the allegations against the cardinal. Pell was ordered to appear in Melbourne Magistrates Court on July 18.

Pell, 76, has repeatedly denied all abuse allegations made against him. The Catholic Church in Australia, which issues statements on Pell's behalf, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the charges.

"It is important to note that none of the allegations that have been made against Cardinal Pell have, obviously, been tested in any court yet," Patton told reporters in Melbourne. "Cardinal Pell, like any other defendant, has a right to due process."

The charges are a new and serious blow to Pope Francis, who has already suffered several credibility setbacks in his promised "zero tolerance" policy about sex abuse.

For years, Pell has faced allegations that he mishandled cases of clergy abuse when he was archbishop of Melbourne and, later, Sydney.

His actions as archbishop came under intense scrutiny in recent years by a government-authorized investigation into how the Catholic Church and other institutions have responded to the sexual abuse of children.

Australia's Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse -- the nation's highest form of inquiry -- has found high levels of abuse in Australia's Catholic Church, revealing earlier this year that 7 percent of Catholic priests were accused of sexually abusing children over the past several decades.

Recently, Pell himself became the focus of a clergy sex abuse investigation, with Victoria detectives flying to the Vatican last year to interview the cardinal. It is unclear what allegations the charges announced today relate to, but two men, now in their 40s, have said that Pell touched them sexually at a swimming pool in the late 1970s, when Pell was a senior priest in Melbourne.

A Section on 06/29/2017

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