Cardinal George Pell appears in court to appeal convictions for sexually abusing choirboys

The most senior Roman Catholic found guilty of child sex abuse has appeared in court to appeal his convictions for molesting two choirboys in an Australian cathedral.

Cardinal George Pell’s lawyers argued he could not have abused the two victims undetected moments after Sunday mass while dressed in archbishops’ robes in the late 1990s.

The 77-year-old wore a black suit and black shirt with a cleric’s collar as he appeared before three judges at the Victoria state Court of Appeal on Wednesday.

Pell was jailed for six years in March after a jury unanimously found him guilty in December of orally raping a choirboy and his friend, both 13, in St Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne.

In Wednesday’s hearing, Pell’s lawyer Bret Walker argued for more than five hours that the five verdicts against the bishop were “unsafe and unsatisfactory” and should be overturned.

He cited former High Court Justice Michael McHugh, who said “juries are likely to be affected by the prejudices and even the hysterias that from time to time are found in the community”.

The prosecution will present its case for the convictions to be upheld on Thursday. Whoever wins, the case could reach the High Court, Australia’s ultimate arbiter.

Pell, who is being held in protective custody in jail, came and went from the court in a prison van and said nothing during the hearing.

He remains Australia’s highest-ranking Catholic as the Vatican conducts its own investigation into the convictions of Pope Francis‘s former finance minister.

Francis’s papacy has been thrown into turmoil by clerical sexual abuse and the church’s handling of such cases worldwide.

In a little more than a year, the Pope has admitted he made “grave errors” over an abuse cover-up in Chile, Pell was convicted of abuse, a French cardinal was convicted of failing to report a paedophile, and a third cardinal, former US church leader Theodore McCarrick, was defrocked after a Vatican investigation determined he abused children and adults.

Mr Walker told the three judges the main grounds for appeal was that the jury could not have found Pell guilty beyond reasonable doubt on the evidence.

In written submissions, Pell’s lawyers said more than 20 prosecution witnesses who had an official role in the Sunday mass in 1996 gave evidence that the offences did not or could not have occurred.

“This evidence constituted a catalogue of at least 13 solid obstacles in the path of a conviction,” they said.

“No matter what view was taken of the complainant as a witness, it was simply not open to a jury to accept his words beyond reasonable doubt,” they added.

Pell’s lawyers argue in their submissions that the “the evidence showed the offending was impossible”.

The hearing took place as an 83-year-old protester who had driven 600 miles from his home in Newcastle, New South Wales, demonstrated outside the court against the church’s response to child abuse.

“I’m a victim. I hope they put a rope around [Pell’s] neck,” a tearful Joe Mitchell said. “They say ‘how could you remember back 70 years?’ I remember everything.”

Additional reporting by agencies