Prosecutors insisted the conviction of Australian Cardinal George Pell for child sexual abuse was “unimpeachable” as his appeal against the guilty verdict went into a second day in Melbourne on Thursday.
But a prosecutor stumbled repeatedly as he sought to counter defence arguments that Pell’s guilty verdict in December was unreasonable.
Lawyers for Pell, 77, had on Wednesday raised 13 objections to his conviction on five counts of sexual abuse for the assault of two 13-year-old choirboys following Sunday Mass in the 1990s.
The main point of their appeal is that the jury verdict was unreasonably dependent on the testimony of a single victim – the second choirboy died in 2014 – and that the surviving witness was not credible.
The former Vatican number three, who controlled the Holy See’s vast finances and was involved in the election of two popes, was sentenced in March to six years in prison.
He was accused of sexually abusing the two choirboys in 1996 and 1997 in the sacristy and hallways of St Patrick’s Cathedral when he was Archbishop of Melbourne.
In his opening remarks on Thursday, prosecutor Christopher Boyce rejected defence arguments that the victim’s testimony was a…
