Catholic Church loses bid to restrict family’s lawsuit against Pell and church

Pell was found guilty in 2018 by a County Court jury of abusing two teenage choirboys in Melbourne’s St Patrick’s Cathedral after a Sunday Mass in December 1996. Those convictions were quashed by the High Court in 2020 and Pell was released from prison after more than a year in custody. He died in January.

One of the choirboys died in his 30s in 2014 from an accidental heroin overdose, having never made a complaint against Pell. The deceased man’s father, referred to in court under the…