Australia’s highest court on Tuesday unanimously acquitted Cardinal George Pell, once the top conservative in the Vatican, of charges of sexual abuse leveled against him by former choirboys.
The appeal decision, which was handed down mid-Tuesday morning in Brisbane, was the result of a five-year legal battle that arose after accusations surfaced that Pell had in 1996 abused two teenage choirboys in the sacristy of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne. Sexual abuse charges have swirled around Pell since 2002, when a man in Melbourne accused the cardinal of abusing a boy at a summer camp in 1961.
Pell’s defense argued throughout his case that charges of abuse, which included groping and oral penetration, were impossible, as Pell would not likely have had enough time in the sacristy after mass to commit sexual misconduct in the way his accusers claimed. Former employees at the cathedral told the Catholic News Agency after Pell’s conviction in 2019 that they, too, doubted Pell would have been able to commit the offenses.
The High Court concurred, writing that the lower court jury “ought to have entertained a doubt as to the applicant’s guilt with respect to each of the offenses for which he was convicted.” Because of this oversight, the court ordered that “the convictions be quashed and that verdicts of acquittal be entered in their place.”
“While the Court of Appeal majority assessed the evidence of the opportunity witnesses as leaving open the possibility that the complainant’s account was correct, their Honours’ analysis failed to engage with the question of whether there remained a reasonable possibility that the offending had not taken place, such that there ought to have been a reasonable doubt as to the applicant’s guilt,” the court wrote in its opinion.
The 78-year-old Pell, who has been in prison since 2019, denied the charges throughout the case. At the time that they were brought forward, Pell was serving as finance minister to Pope Francis in an effort to reform the Vatican’s finance system. Pell had become known for his conservative stances on abortion, gay marriage, and climate change, as well as his leadership in responding to the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse crisis in Australia.
