Page:Pell v The Queen.pdf/36

Kiefel CJ

Bell J

Gageler J

Keane J

Nettle J

Gordon J

Edelman J

and it might be thought unremarkable that he should recall that on the first and second occasions on which the applicant, as the new Archbishop of Melbourne, celebrated Sunday solemn Mass in the Cathedral, he had greeted congregants as they left after the service.

104 The respondent's reliance in this Court on the two choirboys' evidence, that sometimes the applicant processed back to the Cathedral with the choir, is no answer to Portelli's evidence concerning the solemn Masses on 15 and 22 December 1996. Moreover, their evidence hardly calls into question the evidence of the opportunity witnesses of the applicant's practice of greeting congregants after Mass.

105 Nathan's recollection was that, on the occasions that the applicant processed out of and around the side of the Cathedral, the applicant was in front of him. There does not appear to have been any question in the evidence of the other witnesses that when the applicant took part in the procession, as it entered the Cathedral or as it made its way down the centre aisle at the conclusion of the Mass, as the most senior of the participants, he was at its end.

106 Parissi accepted that his memory of standing back to allow the applicant to re-enter the Cathedral complex might be wrong, as his memory of archbishops and priests tended to blur. Parissi was a chorister when Archbishop Little celebrated Mass and, as noted, Archbishop Little did not leave the procession to greet congregants.

(iii) Consideration – the timing of the assaults and the "hive of activity"

107 As the Court of Appeal majority observed, the effect of the altar servers' evidence was that the unlocking of the priests' sacristy doors, and the bowing to the crucifix, occurred soon after the procession finished. By the time the procession returned, and the altar servers reached the door giving access to the eastern end of the sacristy corridor, the doors to the priests' sacristy were unlocked.

108 It will be recalled that it was A's account that he and B broke away from the procession at a point at which the choristers were congregated outside the metal gate which gave access to the toilet corridor. A and B made their way back into the Cathedral through the south transept door and from there through the double