Australia police charge Vatican cardinal with sex assault
SYDNEY — Australian police charged a top Vatican cardinal Thursday with multiple counts of historical sexual assault offenses, a decision certain to rock the highest levels of the Holy See.
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 issued a summons for Pell to appear in an Australian court to face multiple charges of “historic sexual offenses,” meaning offenses that generally occurred some time ago. Patton said there are multiple complainants against Pell.
It is unclear what allegations the charges announced Thursday relate to, but two men, now in their 40s, have said that Pell touched them inappropriately at a swimming pool in the late 1970s, when Pell was a senior priest in Melbourne.
Pell was ordered to appear July 18 in Melbourne Magistrates Court.
Australia has no extradition treaty with the Vatican, but the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney said in a statement that Pell would return to Australia to fight the sexual assault charges as soon as possible.
The archdiocese statement released on his behalf said Pell “again strenuously denied all allegations” against him.
The charges are a new setback to Pope Francis, who has promised a “zero tolerance” policy about sex abuse. But an advisory commission he established lost credibility after its two members who were survivors of abuse left.
For years, Pell has faced allegations that he mishandled cases of clergy abuse when he was archbishop of Melbourne and, later, Sydney.
When Francis was asked last year about the accusations against Pell, he said he would wait for Australian justice before judging.
“Once justice has spoken, I will speak,” he said.
Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse — the nation’s highest form of inquiry — has found shocking levels of abuse in Australia’s Catholic Church, revealing this year that 7 percent of Catholic priests were accused of sexually abusing children.