Cardinal Pell wrote to the victim, Anthony Jones, on February 14, 2003, claiming his complaint of sexual assault could not be substantiated because an investigator had found no other victims had come forward, and that the priest, Father Terence Goodall, then living in Penshurst, had denied all the allegations.

But documents obtained by the ABC's Lateline show that the same day he wrote to Mr Jones, Cardinal Pell also wrote to a second victim to say he was satisfied with the truth of that man's complaint.

The Lateline documents also revealed Cardinal Pell received a church psychosexual report in 2003 which said Father Goodall had abused a girl, 16, propositioned two seminary students, invited altar boys to strip naked while swimming and had consensual sex with another man in 1996.

Three weeks earlier, Cardinal Pell had received a report from an independent investigation by Howard Murray into Father Goodall advising him that the complaints of both men should be upheld.

Mr Jones, now 54, was 29 and training as a teacher when Father Goodall assaulted him in a Cronulla pool and then again that night in a presbytery in 1982.

In 2005, Father Goodall pleaded guilty to two counts of indecently assaulting Mr Jones.

Sydney District Court heard Goodall was 41 when he met the victim, a devout Catholic, at a dinner party.

The next night the men shared a candle-lit dinner, drank alcohol and went for a swim at a Cronulla pool where Goodall fondled him.

Goodall was sentenced to imprisonment until the rising of the court and four seconds later he was a free man but the sentence entailed a prison conviction against his name.

In a statement Cardinal Pell denied there was a cover-up or that he tried to mislead Mr Jones.

''The letter to Mr Jones was badly worded and a mistake. I was attempting to inform him there was no other allegation of rape,'' he said.

''There was no attempt at a cover-up. Both sets of allegations against Father Goodall were followed to their conclusions.''