Australia tries Vatican official on child sex abuse charges

‘An Australian court has begun the trial of the most senior Vatican official that has ever been charged in Catholic Church sex abuse scandals.
Australia’s highest-ranking Catholic and Pope Francis’ top financial adviser, Cardinal George Pell, made his first court appearance on Wednesday after being charged last month with sexual abuse of multiple individuals years earlier in his Australian home state of Victoria.
While the details of the charges against the 76-year-old cleric — who has maintained his innocence — are yet to be revealed to the public, police have described them as historical sexual assault offenses, which means the alleged crimes happened years ago.
The development came after Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse revealed earlier this year that seven percent of Catholic priests were accused of having sexually abused children across Australia over the past several decades.’
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