The fate of jailed Australian Cardinal George Pell was in the balance Thursday as judges adjourned to deliberate over an appeal against his conviction on historical child sex abuse charges.
The three judges in Victoria state's Supreme Court in Melbourne heard two days of arguments by Pell's lawyers demanding his December conviction be quashed, while prosecutors insisted the jury verdict against the one-time top Vatican official was "unimpeachable".
The judges can decide to reject the appeal, order a retrial or acquit Pell, the Catholic Church's most senior convicted child molester.
There was no indication of when their ruling would be handed down.
Lawyers for Pell, who turns 78 on Saturday, 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.
Their appeal maintains that the case against Pell was unreasonably dependent on the testimony of a single victim - the second choirboy died in 2014 - and fell short of proving his guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt".
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.
Pell's defence team argued during the first day of the appeal that it was "physically impossible" for the cleric to have committed the crimes in a crowded cathedral following Sunday services.
"The verdicts represent a disturbing failure of our jury system," Pell's team said in their submission. "The verdicts should be quashed."
Pell's team cast doubt on everything from the timing of the incident to the improbability of his being able to move his cumbersome archbishop's robes aside to commit the assaults.
The prosecution, taking the floor on the second day, defended the account given by Pell's surviving victim, calling him a "witness of truth".
"When looking at the whole of the evidence, the integrity of the jury's verdicts is unimpeachable," they said.
Prosecutor Christopher Boyce, however, struggled at several points to respond to questions from the judges, and was visibly rattled after inadvertently naming the surviving complainant in open court, contrary to legal rulings.
The hearing was live-streamed to the public, but a 15-second delay allowed the court to prevent the victim's name being broadcast.
Pell attended both days of the hearing, flanked by heavy police guard.
Wearing his clerical collar, Pell appeared deep in thought as he pressed his fingertips together and listened to the proceedings.
He took copious notes on a yellow legal pad and at one point passed a post-it note to his legal team through a guard.
