Australia’s highest court on Tuesday acquitted former Vatican finance chief Cardinal George Pell of child sex-abuse charges, overturning a conviction that has bitterly divided Australian society and Catholics around the world.
The 78-year-old prelate was serving a six-year prison sentence after a jury found him guilty of assaulting two 13-year-old choirboys in a Melbourne cathedral while he was the city’s archbishop in the 1990s. He will walk free from prison after Tuesday’s ruling, delivered to a nearly empty courtroom because…