Australian Cardinal George Pell has applied to attend the Victoria state Court of Appeal in Melbourne in person for the challenge that is set to be heard by three judges on Wednesday and Thursday.
But he is not required to come to court and could remain in the Melbourne prison where he has been held in custody since he was sentenced in March to six years in prison. He is held in special protective custody because paedophiles are regarded as being at higher risk of harm from other prisoners.
Pope Francis’s former finance minister was convicted in December of orally raping a 13-year-old choirboy and indecently dealing with the boy and the boy’s 13-year-old friend in the 1990s. Pell had become archbishop of Melbourne, Australia’s second-largest city, only months before.
Court orders had prevented publication for months of the details of that trial and an earlier trial on similar charges that had ended in September with a deadlocked jury.
Pell was initially spared prison when he was convicted so that he could have both knees surgically replaced at a Sydney hospital.
Professor Jeremy Gans, who heads the Melbourne Law School and is an expert on Victoria criminal law, said Pell has a strong chance of winning the appeal on the ground that the verdicts were “unreasonable”.
Pell’s lawyers will argue that the jury could not have been satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that Pell…
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