the latest Cardinal George Pell has told the child abuse royal commission he was deceived in a world of crime and cover-ups by people who did not want the status quo disturbed.

Australia's most senior Catholic claimed he was not briefed properly or adequately by the Catholic Education Office and Archbishop about abuse in Ballarat and Melbourne.

Giving evidence from Rome's Hotel Quirinale for a third day, Cardinal Pell told the commission he believed the information was kept from him because he would have acted on it.

"They realised very clearly I was not cut from the same cloth," he told the inquiry. (READ ON)