The Pope's chief financial adviser has decided to take a leave of absence after being charged with historical sex crimes. Cardinal George Pell, the third most senior Catholic at the Vatican, has fiercely denied the multiple allegations against him. At a news conference on 29 June, he said the two-year investigation had been fuelled by ‘relentless character assassination’. He has now been called back to Australia, to appear before Melbourne Magistrates' Court on 18 July. ‘I am innocent of these charges. They are false. The whole idea of sexual abuse is abhorrent to me’, he told reporters. ‘The court proceedings offer me the opportunity to clear my name and then return to my work in Rome.’ In another story, former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey has been asked to step down from an honorary role in the Diocese of Oxford, after being criticised in an independent review of the church’s handling of sex abuse. The review into disgraced former bishop Peter Ball, who was jailed in 2015, revealed that Lord Carey had failed to pass key information on Ball to the police in 1992. See