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George Pell AC (born 8 June 1941) is an Australian cardinal prelate of the Catholic Church. He became the inaugural Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy in 2014. He previously served as the eighth Archbishop of Sydney (2001–2014), auxiliary bishop (1987–1996) and archbishop (1996–2001) of the Archdiocese of Melbourne. He was created a cardinal in 2003. Ordained in 1966, he has also been an author, columnist, public speaker and sportsman, having been signed by the Richmond Football Club, Australian Rules Football team in 1959. Since becoming Archbishop of Melbourne in 1996, he has maintained a high public profile on a wide range of issues, while retaining a strict adherence to Catholic orthodoxy. Pell studied in Rome, Oxford and at Monash University and has been a Visiting Scholar at Oxford and at Cambridge. He worked as a priest in regional Victoria and in Melbourne and has since worked widely in education, in seminaries and the charity sector, chairing the aid organisation Caritas Australia from 1988-97. He has written widely on religious subjects, authoring several books and writing a weekly column in Sydney’s Sunday Telegraph. He received a number of international appointments under the pontificate of John Paul II, and was brought to Rome to advise on Vatican City finance and governance issues by Pope Francis. He was appointed as a delegate to the Australian Constitutional Convention in 1998, received the Centenary Medal from the Australian Government in 2003, and was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia in 2005. Upon becoming Archbishop of Melbourne, Pell set up the "Melbourne Response" diocesan protocol to investigate and deal with complaints of sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Melbourne. The protocol, acclaimed as being the first of its kind in the world, has been widely criticised for lacking sufficient independence, being legalistic, for initially capping ex-gratia payments to victims at A$50,000 and for advising that lawsuits would be ‘strenuously defended’. Australia's wide-ranging 2013-2017 Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse called Pell three times to give evidence in Case Study 16 which examined the Melbourne Response protocol, Case Study 28 regarding handling of abuse in the Ballarat and Melbourne Dioceses (where Pell had worked as a junior priest and before he was an Archbishop) and Case Study 8 regarding the response to the John Ellis complaint under the Towards Healing protocol and subsequent lawsuit. Pell was also called to testify at the 2013 Victorian government Inquiry into the Handling of Child Abuse by Religious and other Organisations. Amid anger at the Church's handling of abuse claims, Pell's appearances were subject to criticism and controversy. On 29 June 2017, Pell was charged with multiple historical sexual assault offences and is summonsed to appear in the Magistrates' Court of Victoria on 26 July 2017. Pell denies all charges, and has been granted leave by the Pope to return to Australia to defend himself. The Cardinal is reported to be the most senior Catholic cleric in the world to face such charges.