Pell has been ordered to face a Melbourne court on July 26 for a preliminary hearing on multiple sexual assault charges related to offences allegedly committed decades ago, when he was a senior cleric in Australia. I am innocent of these charges," Pell, unofficially considered the number three in the Vatican hierarchy, said from Rome after being charged late last month. The whole idea of sexual abuse is abhorrent to me." The charges coincided with the final stages of Australia's Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse, ordered in 2012 after a decade of pressure to investigate widespread allegations of institutional paedophilia. Pell appeared before the commission three times, once in person and twice via video-link from Rome.

Source: The Nation Bangkok July 09, 2017 23:15 UTC