CANBERRA: Disgraced Catholic Cardinal George Pell has been given a final avenue for appeal against his convictions for molesting two 13-year-old choirboys in a Melbourne cathedral in the 1990s.
In a brief procedural statement, Justice Michelle Gordon said Australia’s High Court had granted the 78-year-old former Vatican treasurer “special leave to appeal” his convictions for child abuse.
Currently serving a six-year sentence, Pell is the most senior Catholic to go to jail amid a swathe of child abuse cases against clergy around the world.
Gordon said the case would “be referred to a full court of this court for argument”.
No date was set for the appeal hearing, but it is not expected before 2020.
Pell had lost a previous attempt to overturn the convictions in Victoria state’s Court of Appeal in August, but that landmark decision saw the judges split in a 2-1 verdict.
Two of the judges said the sole surviving victim, a former choirboy now in his 30s was “very compelling” in his evidence and someone who “was a witness of truth”.
The third judge, however, found the victim’s account “contained discrepancies” and there was a “significant possibility” Pell did not commit the offences.
Pell’s legal team argued in their written submission to the High Court that the majority judges applied an “erroneous judicial method” in upholding the jury’s verdict that reversed the onus of proof onto him.
Pell and his supporters have staunchly maintained he did not commit the crimes, which came to light after one of the victims went to the police when the other died of a drug overdose in 2014.
Pell, who once helped elect popes, was found guilty of abusing the two boys after catching them swigging from a bottle of sacramental wine in the sacristy following Sunday mass.
During Pell’s trial under a court-ordered veil of secrecy, the Vatican gradually removed him from top Church bodies with little explanation.
Pell is also facing multiple civil compensation suits, including from the father of the deceased choirboy. — AFP
