Australian court set to hear Cardinal Pell’s final appeal on child abuse conviction

A last-chance appeal by embattled Cardinal George Pell, who was a former Vatican treasurer under Pope Francis, against his child sex abuse convictions opened in Australia’s top court on Wednesday.

The fate of Cardinal Pell is now in the hands of the country’s most senior judges as he becomes the highest-ranking Catholic official ever to be convicted of child sex crimes in modern times.

However, reports say that the 78-year-old was not present for the two-day High Court hearing in Canberra, where his lawyers will mount a final bid to clear his name after he was sentenced to six years in prison for sexually assaulting two choirboys in the 1990s.

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In court submissions, Pell’s legal team argued the majority judges applied an “erroneous judicial method” that required the cleric “to establish actual innocence as opposed to merely pointing to doubt”.

The embattled Pell, who was previously the archbishop of Melbourne, was unanimously convicted of the two sex offences against children in December 2018 by a jury in Victoria.

Pell was found guilty last year of the rape and sexual assault of two 13-year-old choirboys in the mid-1990s. He is currently serving a six-year jail term in Melbourne.

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