Australia's High Court overturns child sex conviction of Catholic Cardinal George Pell

The Australian High Court on Tuesday overturned the child sex conviction of Cardinal George Pell, freeing from prison the highest ranking Roman Catholic ensnared in the church's pedophilia scandal.

Pell, 78, was convicted by a jury in 2018 and will now have his convictions replaced with verdicts of acquittal, the court said in a statement. 

"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 offenses for which he was convicted, and ordered that the convictions be quashed and that verdicts of acquittal be entered in their place," the court said.

The convictions for offenses allegedly perpetrated against two 13-year-old choirboys included "one charge of sexual penetration of a child under 16 years and four charges of committing an act of indecency with or in the presence of a child under the age of 16 years."

Pell's conviction came at his second trial, as the jury in his first trial failed to arrive at an agreement on the verdicts.

The ruling ends a lengthy legal battle that started a few years ago when a man approached police alleging Pell had abused him nearly three decades earlier a a teen-ager. At the time the allegations surfaced, Pell had risen to become the Vatican's treasurer and he vigorously denied the charges.