It was at 3.45pm on Tuesday 11 December that Cardinal George Pell, one of Pope Francis’s most trusted officials and the third most senior Catholic in the world, found out that he would, in all likelihood, be going to jail.

Room 4.3 at the county court in Melbourne was silent as the jury foreman delivered the verdict which – now that a strict suppression order on the case has been lifted – will send shockwaves across the global Catholic congregation.

Pell, the Vatican treasurer, was guilty of sexually assaulting two boys.

Cardinal George Pell: Vatican treasurer found guilty of child sexual assault Read more

As each of the five charges was read out, and as each time the foreman of the jury confirmed his guilt, Pell sat in the dock, head bowed, staring forward, nodding his head slightly.

Despite the cardinal’s assertions that the charges against him were a series of “deranged falsehoods”, despite having brought together a formidable defence team led by the high-profile and expensive barrister Robert Richter QC, and with the crux of the prosecution’s case hinging on the evidence of just one complainant, the jury was unanimous.

They believed the complainant’s account that some time in December 1996, after presiding over Sunday solemn mass at St Patrick’s Cathedral as archbishop of Melbourne, Pell forced his penis into the mouth of two 13-year-old boys. He masturbated himself while masturbating them. About one month later, as he passed one of the boys in a corridor of the church, Pell pushed the boy against a wall and forcefully squeezed his genitals.

The allegations had been the prosecution’s to prove. Many of the witnesses called were now elderly. Former choirboys who gave evidence struggled to remember details about the choir procession and the church layout more than two decades after the fact. To convict Pell, the jury had to believe without doubt that the complainant was reliable and honest.

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They did. Guilty was their response to all five charges after just over three days of deliberation. A courtroom that included about eight journalists, a Jesuit priest, a former Australian ambassador to the Vatican, and a handful of abuse advocates and Pell supporters sat stunned by the magnitude and import of those words.

Cardinal George Pell was guilty. On every count.

Two trials – one verdict

The trial in Melbourne, described as the “cathedral trial”, was not Pell’s first.

In August he faced the county court on the same charges he was eventually convicted of. That trial lasted for almost five weeks and resulted in a hung jury. A mistrial was declared, with several of the jurors in tears as the forewoman told the court’s chief judge, Peter Kidd, they could not come to either a unanimous or a majority 11-to-one verdict.

A retrial began in November 2018 with a strict suppression order in place preventing any reporting of both the previous case and the retrial. That was because Pell faced further, separate, charges known as the “swimmers trial” in a case due to be heard this April.

Suppression orders are common in child sexual abuse cases and this was no different. The order was lifted after so-called tendency evidence prosecutors were relying on using in the swimmers trial was on Friday deemed inadmissible by Kidd. Their chances of successfully prosecuting the case were significantly impeded, and on Tuesday they announced that the trial would be dropped. The suppression on the cathedral trial was then lifted.

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It can now be revealed that Pell was convicted of four charges of an indecent act on a child under the age of 16, and one charge of sexual penetration of a child under 16.

The prosecution, led by the crown barrister Mark Gibson, said those acts had occurred some time in the second half of 1996 after mass at the Melbourne cathedral, within months of Pell’s inauguration as archbishop.

Two choirboys had finished their singing duties and decided to have some fun, the court heard. They slipped away from the choir procession as it exited the cathedral shortly after completing mass at noon, and made their way back into the building through the south-side entry. They walked down a corridor leading to the sacristies – the private rooms, off limits to the public, and used by priests and the archbishop to robe and disrobe in.

In the sacristy they found sacramental wine in an unlocked wooden cupboard, and each took a few swigs.

“We were excited, feeling mischievous,” the complainant, who cannot be named, told the court. “I’d never been in this room before.”

It was then that Pell walked in, still in his robes.

“He was alone. He planted himself in the doorway and said something like, ‘What are you doing in here?’ or ‘You’re in trouble,’” the complainant said. “There was this moment where we all just sort of froze, and then he undid his trousers or his belt, like he started moving underneath his robes.”

Pell pulled out his penis and approached the other boy, grabbing his head.

The complainant asked Pell, “Can you let us go? We didn’t do anything.”

“I could see his [the boy’s] head being lowered towards his [Pell’s] genitalia,” the complainant recalled. “Then he sort of started squirming, he was struggling. His head was being controlled and it was down near archbishop Pell’s genitals. I was no more than a couple of metres away.”

This took place for about a minute or two. Pell stopped and turned to the complainant.

“And then he put his penis into my mouth. Archbishop Pell was standing, he was erect, and he pushed it into my mouth. He instructed me to undo my pants and take off my pants, and I did that. And then he started touching my genitalia. Archbishop Pell was touching himself on his penis with his other hand.”

When it was over the complainant, in shock, pulled up his pants. The boys left the room and tried to rejoin the procession before returning their robes.

About a month later, again after Sunday solemn mass, Pell passed the complainant in a corridor of the church and attacked. He pushed the boy against a wall and forcefully squeezed his genitals through his choir robes.

“Nothing was said,” the complainant said. “It was all within a matter of seconds.”

‘Pell has terrified me my whole life’

The media and public were barred from being present during the complainant’s evidence, as is standard in sexual assault cases to protect the victim from reliving their trauma in front of an audience.

But his police statement, made in June 2015, and his evidence to the court via video link were quoted throughout the trial. The other boy involved died in 2014 from a heroin overdose. He never reported the abuse to police.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Members of the media surround Pell after his first court appearance in July 2017. Photograph: Joe Castro/AAP

The surviving complainant said it had taken him two decades to go to police because he had immediately pushed the attack to the “darkest recesses” of his mind. Being in the choir was a condition of the complainant’s competitive scholarship to attend St Kevin’s College, an elite independent school in the affluent inner-Melbourne suburb of Toorak. His parents were going through a divorce, and his losing the scholarship would upset them.

“I knew a scholarship could be given or taken away even at that age,” he told the court. “And I didn’t want to lose that. It meant so much to me and my family. And what would I do if I said such a thing about an archbishop?

“It’s something I carried with me the whole of my life. I refrained from telling anyone. I was young and didn’t really know what had happened to me. I didn’t know what it was, if it was normal.”

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In his police statement, the complainant said he remembered Pell as “being a big force in the place”.

“He emanated an air of being a powerful person. I’ve been struggling with this a long time … and my ability to be here. Because I think Pell has terrified me my whole life … he was [later] in the Vatican. He was an extremely, presidentially powerful guy who had a lot of connections.”

Prosecutors said the complainant was a believable witness who provided reliable evidence. They said the overall evidence from choirboys, altar servers, the choir master and master of ceremonies, Charles Portelli, about the layout of the church, and whether Pell would have the opportunity to offend, fitted with the complainant’s account rather than discredited it.

‘You wouldn’t hang a chicken on this evidence’

Pell’s defence was led by Robert Richter, a formidable defence barrister with a booming voice, known for his sometimes theatrical interrogation style. Previously he has successfully represented notorious underworld figures, and his legal team is estimated to have cost Pell about $50,000 a day.

Richter told the jurors that the offences could not and did not happen.

He said the case against Pell was made up of improbabilities, which could only lead jurors to finding that the alleged offences were “impossible” and defied common sense.

They were the product of “fantasy”, Richter said, because Pell had never been alone during mass while he was archbishop of Melbourne.

How would he know the other boy wouldn’t be running out of the room, raising the alarm or running away in tears? Robert Richter, defence barrister

Richter told the jurors Pell was always surrounded by people and accompanied by Portelli during Sunday solemn mass, which he described as a “production” involving dignitaries, congregants and tourists. This made it impossible that Pell could have abused two boys unnoticed, Richter said.

After mass Pell would often stand on the church steps, meeting and greeting parishioners, witnesses confirmed. Portelli would then accompany him to the sacristies to help him disrobe. Some former church staff told the court the sacristy would be bustling after mass, with altar servers locking away precious vessels and chalices.

“It’s a little bit like the Queen, I suppose, the Queen when she is robed is never unattended, she’s not expecting to dress and get undressed on her own … there are always attendants and it’s that sort of situation,” Richter said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Robert Richter, Pell’s high-profile defence barrister, outside court in March last year. Photograph: Con Chronis/AFP/Getty Images

Why would Pell risk abusing two boys in his first months in the high-profile role as Melbourne’s archbishop, argued Richter and his assistant, the defence barrister Ruth Shann.

It was a time when the Catholic church was embroiled in scandal. Notorious paedophile priests including Gerald Ridsdale – once a friend of Pell’s – had by then been convicted of more than 70 charges of abusing children.

Once anointed as archbishop in August 1996, Pell took action to address the scandals by announcing the Melbourne Response, the Catholic archdiocese of Melbourne’s program to address child sexual abuse allegations. The program has since been widely criticised by abuse survivors and their families.

Play Video 1:02 Cardinal George Pell found guilty of child sexual assault – video

Nonetheless, Richter said, Pell was a man doing his best to tackle abuse and would not have risked his reputation by abusing two boys at St Patrick’s Cathedral as a new archbishop.

In the retrial, Richter resorted to using a PowerPoint presentation during his closing address to drill his point home, a move that surprised many in the courtroom. One slide flashed on the screen that simply read: “Only a madman would attempt to rape two boys in the priests sacristy immediately after Sunday solemn mass.”

Kidd allowed the PowerPoint, but barred Richter from using a video animation during his closing address, saying it risked leading the jury to believe that what was being shown was fact, and new evidence was not allowed to be shown during closing addresses.

The madman theory

Pell was not mad, Richter told the jurors, but he would have to be if he had sexually assaulted two boys.

“The next aspect of the madman theory is there is nothing to prevent one boy running screaming from the room while the other is under attack,” he told them.

“How would Pell know that was not going to happen? How would he know the other boy wouldn’t be running out of the room, raising the alarm or running away in tears?”

If Pell really wanted to abuse two boys, Richter added, he would have taken them to his private office after discovering them in the sacristy, where he could attack them behind a locked door. Richter told jurors it was unfathomable that the boys would not have spoken to each other or anyone else about the abuse afterwards .

“It makes no sense because it did not happen,” Richter said. It also made no sense that two boys could “nick off” from a procession and sneak back into the church unnoticed by other choirboys, church staff or adults.

“The prosecution case is cherry picking bits of evidence saying, ‘Oh, it’s possible to do this, it’s possible that this happened.’ The crown case is built on speculation. You would not hang a chicken on that, let alone decide a man’s fate.”

But some of the choirboys gave evidence that the procession after mass was not always orderly and that they might not have noticed two of their number slipping away. Boys were keen to disrobe and leave. One choirboy said that once the choir had processed outside and reached a certain point, it was “game on”.

Another former choirboy said once the procession had passed through the outside gate, children would relax and move out of line.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Clouds hang over St Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican. Pell is the third most senior Catholic cleric in the world. Photograph: Gregorio Borgia/AP

Gibson, the crown barrister, said no one remembered two boys “nicking off” because nobody had noticed them leave. It would only be remembered as a remarkable event had someone seen it, he said.

But Richter told jurors that even if two children managed to sneak back into the church after mass and enter the sacristy unseen, the sacristy would have been a “hive of activity”, and the long-serving sacristan Max Potter would have been there. They would have been caught, he said.

He also told jurors to consider that Australia had no extradition treaty with the Vatican, and that Pell had returned to Australia to face trial of his own accord.

The drama of the court

The battle between the defence and prosecution – between Richter and Gibson – gripped not only those in court, but also some outside.

That Pell was the most high-profile person in the Vatican to be charged with such offences at the time of his arrest was inescapable. Barristers from unrelated cases being heard in other courtrooms came in to listen.

Throughout the first trial Pell sat in the dock, often writing notes as evidence was given. By the retrial in November, the notepad was largely gone, he was no longer able to sit and stand as the jury exited and entered owing to a knee problem, and he was using a walking cane to get around.

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After a couple of former church staff who gave evidence shook hands with Pell on their way out of the courtroom during the first trial, it was ordered that future witnesses walk to and from the stand, avoiding the dock – to prevent any interaction that might influence the jurors.

When the court adjourned each day for lunch, Pell sat with his legal team, guarded by security staff, in a tiny meeting room adjacent to the courtroom, eating sausage rolls, milkshakes and sandwiches. He did not venture outside during breaks.

Jurors were selected from 250 people who came into the court during the empanelment process. Kidd was concerned that it would be difficult to find a group of impartial people who did not have biases towards or against Pell or the church. There were concerns about not having the requisite 12 for a verdict if jurors became sick during the lengthy five-week trial, leading to 14 jurors being selected.

He was simply someone telling the truth and telling it how it was Mark Gibson, crown barrister

Before jury deliberations, two jurors were balloted off. Four women and eight men remained, among them a church pastor and a secondary school teacher.

It was always going to be a tough case to prove. Not only were prosecutors grappling with the passage of time, but before he died in 2014 the other alleged victim told his mother he was never sexually abused. Prosecutors called about two dozen witnesses throughout the trial, many of them former choirboys, who had to try to conjure memories from their childhood and teenage years. Their responses to questioning were often “I don’t remember” and “I can’t recall”.

It meant that the prosecution pinned its case against Pell almost entirely on the evidence of one person – the complainant.

The summation

In his succinct but powerful closing remarks, Gibson asked the jury to consider how the complainant would have known the layout of the priest’s sacristy, and that there were wooden panels, a storage cupboard, a kitchenette and sacramental wine in there. It was not a place choirboys were allowed to enter. Yet the complainant was able to describe the room.

“You might ask yourselves how would he know that unless he was in there,” Gibson said. “How does he know about the concealed alcove area without actually being there? How does he know it’s a storage-kitchenette kind of thing and there being a wood-panelled area if he’s not been in there?

“How does [the complainant] know that that was where the wine was kept?”

He asked jurors to consider the overall impression the complainant left them with.

“Did he strike you as an honest witness? In our submission he was not a person indulging in a fantasy or inventing things to a point where he now believes his own inventive mind. He was simply someone telling it how it was and is. A person genuinely recounting events experienced as a 13-year-old through the eyes of a 34-year-old.”

‘Not a trial of the Catholic church’

For his part, Richter told jurors that this was a trial of a high-profile man who should not be be forced to take the blame for the failings of the organisation he helped to lead.

“You would have had to live on the moon to not be aware of it,” Richter had told jurors. “Archbishop Pell was portrayed as the Darth Vader of the Catholic church.”

The failings of the Catholic church and accusations that church leaders failed children, combined with Pell’s profile, was “the elephant in the room”, he said.

But he added: “This is not a trial of the Catholic church. Cardinal Pell is not here to answer for failings of various clerics. This is a trial of Cardinal Pell for performing abominable acts.”

I for one strongly believe in the jury system … it’s particularly challenging, especially in an intense case like this Peter Kidd, judge

Kidd, a judge respected by both parties who was firm and thorough throughout the trial, told the jurors from the start: “You, of course, will always bear in mind it’s for the prosecution to prove its case … from beginning to end. And the defence does not need to prove anything.”

In his directions to jurors before they retired to deliberate, Kidd told them to keep in mind that Pell’s defence team were at a significant forensic disadvantage because so much time had passed.

“This is not an opportunity to make Cardinal Pell a scapegoat for the failures of the Catholic church,” Kidd told them.

“You may believe all, none or some of the witnesses’ evidence. Don’t look for hints from me. I’m not going to give you any. I absolutely assure you of that. My role is not to express a view one way or another about the guilt or not of the accused man.”

In the end the jury’s view was clear.

After the verdict, and as shock spread throughout the room, Kidd thanked the jurors for their service. “I for one strongly believe in the jury system, I think it’s really important,” he said. “It’s particularly challenging, especially in an intense case like this.”

He agreed to allow Pell to undergo knee reconstruction surgery, but said the cardinal would be remanded in custody when he returned to court for sentencing on 27 February.

Throughout the trial Pell was driven in a private car, with a police escort waiting each day to quickly whisk him inside and back out.

His next police escort will be to prison.