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13 November 2019The Australian Supreme Court upheld the appeal of Cardinal George Pell, former Vatican finance minister, in prison in Australia on charges of molesting two 13-year-old choristers in Melbourne between 1996 and 1997. "All Australians have the right to appeal to the Supreme Court. Cardinal George Pell exercised this right and the Court ruled that the sentence should be considered by her, "said Monsignor Marc Coleridge, president of the Australian bishops, in a statement.

"I'm innocent"
Pell has always declared himself innocent. The date for the appeal hearing has not yet been decided. "This will prolong what has been a long and difficult process," Coleridge noted in a statement reported by Vatican News in which he hopes the case will be reviewed "as soon as possible and that the Supreme Court ruling will bring clarity and a solution for everyone".

Holy See takes note of the decision
"The Holy See, in confirming its faith in Australian justice, takes note of the decision of the Australian High Court to accept the appeal request presented by Cardinal George Pell, aware that the cardinal has always affirmed his innocence". Thus the Vatican spokesman, Matteo Bruni. "On this occasion, the Holy See once again reiterates its closeness to those who have suffered because of abuses by members of the clergy".

The appeal
The Australian High Court has decided to admit the appeal of Cardinal George Pell against the sentence to six years of imprisonment for child sexual abuse imposed last March by the Victoria Court of Appeal. The court has accepted that the reasons of the lawyers of the cardinal for an appeal and those of the public prosecution are exposed before the seven judges that compose it. For the times, according to Australian newspapers, the decision will not take place before the next advanced year, both in the method and in the merit of this appeal.

Pell's reasons
After being sentenced in the first instance, decided in December last year, Pell's lawyers appealed disputing 13 reasons why sexual abuse of the two altar boys, which took place in 1996 and 1997, when the cardinal was archbishop of Melbourne, they would have been "physically impossible" to perform, both in terms of chronology, and because sexual violence would have taken place in the sacristy at the end of a crowded mass, and due to the physical impossibility of carrying out such violence with heavy religious vestments of the mass.

One in three judges be favorable
Two judges out of three who made up the panel of judges, Anne Ferguson and Chris Maxwell, rejected the appeal, while Judge Mark Weinberg accepted it. In the sentence system of over 300 pages, published last August, we read that Judge Weinberg found that in the victim's testimony there were such discrepancies as to cast doubt on Pell's guilt and that, more generally, the other proofs brought from the victims they made his story "impossible to accept". However, judge Ferguson explained, "the appeal on the basis of unreason (the prosecution, ed) was rejected because two of us have a different point of view on the facts".

Pell remains in jail
The cardinal, 78, is now in prison. Probation will be possible after three years and eight months, when he is 81 years old. Returning to Australia in July 2017 to defend himself in court, after consulting the Pope who had granted him a "farewell", the cardinal, since February 24, 2014, prefect of the Vatican Secretariat for the Economy, has since lapsed from that office. , remained until now vacant, as confirmed last February by the Vatican, at the end of a five-year period, on February 24, 2019.