Cardinal George Pell charged with multiple, historical child sex abuse allegations.

Cardinal George Pell has been charged on summons with multiple, historical sexual assault offences.

Victoria Police say 76-year-old Catholic cleric will appear in Melbourne Magistrates Court on July 18 for a filing hearing.

Cardinal Pell, the Vatican’s finance chief, has repeatedly denied allegations of sexual assault dating back to his time as a Ballarat priest and as Archbishop of Melbourne.

Deputy Commissioner Shane Patton said a summons was served on Dr Pell’s legal representatives in Melbourne on Thursday.

“Cardinal Pell has been treated the same as anyone else in this investigation,” Mr Patton said.

“The process and procedures that are being followed in the charging of Cardinal Pell have been the same that have been applied in a whole range of historical sex offences whenever we investigate them.”

Cardinal Pell faces multiple charges and “multiple complainants”.

“Cardinal Pell, like any other defendant, has a right to due process and so therefore, it is important that the process is allowed to run its natural course,” Mr Patton said.

It is so far unclear just which allegations Cardinal Pell has been charged with.

Complaints were previously made to police relating to alleged sexual assaults in Ballarat between 1976 and 1980 and in East Melbourne between 1996 and 2001.

Cardinal Pell denies all of the allegations made against him. Many were replicated in a book published in May, which Cardinal Pell’s Rome office labelled “an exercise in character assassination”.

Sydney Archbishop Anthony Fisher has said Cardinal Pell, who has co-operated with multiple police, parliamentary and royal commission investigations, is the victim of relentless character attacks.

The child sexual abuse royal commission is yet to hand down its official findings into how church figures, including Cardinal Pell, handled past allegations of child abuse in Victoria’s Ballarat Diocese and the Archdiocese of Melbourne.