Cardinal George Pell has been acquitted of child sex abuse and released from jail.

After an extraordinary legal fight to clear his name the 78-year-old prelate, formerly the Vatican’s chief financial officer and an adviser to Pope Francis, was released from the maximum security Barwon prison in Victoria early this morning after serving a year of a six-year jail term.

“I have consistently maintained my innocence while suffering from a serious injustice,” Cardinal Pell said in a statement issued soon after the High Court of Australia quashed his conviction. “I hold no ill will to my accuser, I do not want my acquittal to add to the hurt and bitterness so many feel; there is certainly hurt and bitterness enough.

“However, my trial was not a referendum on the Catholic Church; nor a referendum on how Church authorities in Australia dealt with the crime of paedophilia in the Church.

“The point was whether I had committed these awful crimes, and I did not.”

Cardinal Pell became the highest-ranking church official to be jailed for sexually abusing children when, in 2018, a County Court jury convicted him of attacks on two choirboys more than two decades earlier.

High Court judges ruled 7-0 that the jury should have entertained a doubt about Cardinal Pell’s guilt. The ruling quashes Cardinal Pell’s conviction based on allegations that the prelate had abused the choirboys at St Patrick’s Cathedral in 1996 and 1997, soon after he became Archbishop of Melbourne. One of the boys gave evidence against Cardinal Pell, while the second died in 2014, without disclosing any abuse.

A jury found Cardinal Pell guilty of five counts of sexual abuse, although he had always maintained his innocence. Due to Covid-19 restrictions on public gatherings, there were none of the boisterous rallies from supporters of Cardinal Pell and victims’ advocates that had been seen at previous court hearings.