A full bench of the High Court of Australia has quashed the conviction of Cardinal George Pell, meaning he will walk free from prison.
In its judgement, the court said that it had reached a unanimous decision.
"The High Court found that the jury, acting rationally on the whole of the evidence, ought to have entertained a doubt as to the applicant's guilt with respect to each of the offences for which he was convicted, and ordered that the convictions be quashed and that verdicts of acquittal be entered in their place," the judgement read.
The 78-year-old Pell is currently serving a six-year prison sentence after being found guilty for abusing two choir boys at St Patrick’s Cathedral in the 1990s when he was Archbishop of Melbourne.
In December 2018 a jury found him guilty of the sexual penetration of a child under the age of 16 and four counts of committing an indecent act with or in the presence of a child.
He is currently serving a non-parole period of three years and eight months in Barwon Prison in Victoria, but it is expected that he will walk free this afternoon.
The court's judgement said there ought to have been reasonable doubt into whether the offending took place.
"While the Court of Appeal majority assessed the evidence of the opportunity witnesses as leaving open the possibility that the complainant's account was correct, their Honours' analysis 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," the judgement said.
In a statement released on Tuesday morning the cardinal said he had always maintained his innocence and had suffered a "serious injustice".
"My trial was not a referendum on the Catholic Church; nor a referendum on how the Church authorities in Australia dealt with the crimes of paedophilia in the church," he said.
"The point was whether I had committed these awful crimes, and I did not," he added.
