George Pell High Court appeal hearing date set for March

ABC

14-2-2019

The High Court has set a date to hear Cardinal George Pell's appeal against his convictions for abusing two choirboys in 1996 while he was Catholic archbishop of Melbourne.

Key points:

• The High Court appeal bid is Pell's final chance to have his convictions overturned
• In November last year the High Court agreed to refer his case to a full bench of the court's seven justices
• The Victorian Court of Appeal dismissed Cardinal Pell's appeal in September last year

The case will be heard on March 11 and 12 in Canberra.

Pell, 78, was convicted on five charges — one count of sexual penetration of a child under the age of 16 and four counts of committing an indecent act with, or in the presence of a child.

In March last year he was sentenced to six years' jail, with a non-parole period of three years and eight months.

In August, two of three judges from Victoria's Court of Appeal turned down Pell's primary ground of appeal, that the jury's verdict was unreasonable.

The judges unanimously dismissed two other grounds of appeal which argued that there were errors in the way the trial was run.

The High Court case will be Pell's final chance to seek to have his convictions overturned.

His offending took place in the sacristy at St Patrick's Cathedral in Melbourne, in what the sentencing judge described as a "brazen and forcible sexual attack on the victims".

Pell was the archbishop of Melbourne in the 1990s and eventually rose to the powerful position of Prefect for the Secretariat for the Economy, a position which essentially made him the Vatican treasurer.