George Pell has been sensationally acquitted of all charges and is set to be released from prison.
Pell, 78, has spent 404 days behind bars after being found guilty of abusing two choirboys at St Patrick’s Cathedral in the 1990s.
But the High Court today ruled the jury’s verdicts, on four counts of indecent assault and one of sexual penetration of a child, were unsafe.
Pell said, “I have consistently maintained my innocence while suffering from a serious injustice,” he said.
“This has been remedied today with the High Court’s unanimous decision.
“I look forward to reading the Judgment and reasons for the decision in detail.
Cardinal Pell took his fight to the High Court after the Victorian Court of Appeal dismissed an earlier appeal in a majority ruling.
In its unanimous decision the High Court said the majority of Victoria’s Court of Appeal who dismissed Pell’s first appeal “failed to engage with the question of whether there remained a reasonable possibility that the offending had not taken place, such that there ought to have been a reasonable doubt as to the applicant’s guilt.”
