Melbourne: Australia's most senior Catholic Cardinal George Pell on Tuesday walked out of prison after the country's highest court unanimously acquitted him of child sex offences, overturning a lower court's judgement against the 78-year-old former Vatican treasurer.
Once the Vatican's third-ranking official, Pell was released from Barwon Prison outside Melbourne and reached a church after serving 13 months of a six-year sentence. He was driven from the prison in a convoy.
Pell was sentenced in March last year to six years in prison with a non-parole period of three years and eight months.
The High Court ruled in its judgement that there is a "significant possibility that an innocent person has been convicted because the evidence did not establish guilt to the requisite standard of proof". Pell was Vatican Treasurer and the highest ranking Catholic official to ever be publicly accused of child sex offenses.
The court released a statement explaining the decision which renders Pell's earlier convictions of sexually abusing two choir boys in the 1990s null and void.
