One of the pope’s top advisors facing multiple charges of historical sex offences has arrived in his native Australia ahead of his first court appearance later this month.<br /><br />Cardinal George Pell was driven away from Sydney airport early on Monday morning (July 10). <br /><br />Pell is the highest-ranking Vatican official to be charged in the Catholic Church’s long-running sexual abuse scandal. <br /><br />No specific details of the allegations have been released, but two men, now in their 40s have said that Cardinal Pell touched them inappropriately at a swimming poll in the late 1970s when Pell was a senior priest in Melbourne.<br /><br />Pell has issued a statement in which he denies the charges. He has been ordered to appear in Melbourne’s Magistrates Court on July 18.<br />
