Pell is the most senior member of the Catholic Church to be involved in what has now been decades of scandal over allegations of systematic child abuse in the ’60s, ’70s and early ’80s, by Catholic clergy worldwide.

The sex abuse scandal reached the public eye in the 1990s after a series of television documentaries, including 1994’s Suffer the Children, brought the issue to light in Ireland. Later, it spread, with reports of widespread clerical abuse affecting thousands of children in dozens of countries, including the United States and Australia. One Australian study undertaken by a royal commission found that 7 percent of Australian priests were accused of child abuse between 1950 and 2009.