Cardinal’s challenge to child sex abuse conviction fails

CARDINAL GEORGE PELL, the former Vatican treasurer, will remain in prison for at least another three years after losing an appeal against his conviction for sexually abusing two 13-year-old choir boys, an Australian court ruled yesterday.

Pell, the highest ranking Catholic to be convicted of child sex offences, was jailed for six years in March for abusing the children at St Patrick’s Cathedral while he was Archbishop of Melbourne in the late Nineties.

Anne Ferguson, the Supreme Court of Victoria Chief Justice, said two of the three judges hearing Pell’s appeal “decided that it was open to the jury to be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that Cardinal Pell was guilty of the offences charged” and rejected his appeal.

Pell will only be eligible for parole in October 2022, when he will be 81.

“I am grateful for a legal system where everybody is equal before the law and no one is above the law,” one of the boys, now in his 30s, said.

A spokesman for Pell said his legal team was considering a final appeal to the High Court of Australia.