Cardinal George Pell will be released from prison after Australia’s High Court quashed his child sexual abuse convictions.

The decision has been made less than a month after the High Court of Australia heard two days of intense legal arguments from the Cardinal’s Lawyers and Victorian prosecutors.

The ruling was handed down by Chief Justice Susan Kiefel in an almost empty High Court registry in Brisbane due to social-distancing measures introduced in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

A statement was released by the High Court of Australia and has been published by The Guardian.

“Today, the High Court granted special leave to appeal against a decision of the Court of Appeal of the Supreme Court of Victoria and unanimously allowed the appeal.

“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 Court held that, on the assumption that the jury had assessed the complainant’s evidence as thoroughly credible and reliable, the evidence of the opportunity witnesses nonetheless required the jury, acting rationally, to have entertained a reasonable doubt as to the applicant’s guilt in relation to the offences involved in both alleged incidents. With respect to each of the applicant’s convictions, there was, consistently with the words the Court used in Chidiac v The Queen (1991) 171 CLR 432 at 444 and M v The Queen (1994) 181 CLR 487 at 494, “a significant possibility that an innocent person has been convicted because the evidence did not establish guilt to the requisite standard of proof”.

Victorian Police have released a statement following the court’s decision.

“We respect the decision of the High Court in this matter and continue to provide support to those complainants involved. Victoria Police remains committed to investigating sexual assault offences and providing justice for victims no matter how many years have passed. We would also like to acknowledge the tireless work on this case by Taskforce Sano investigators over many years.”

Cardinal Pell, 78, has been serving a jail sentence of six years after he was convicted in 2018 of abusing two choirboys in the 1990’s when he was the archbishop of Melbourne.