Cardinal Pell’s verdict set Wednesday

Pell and his supporters have staunchly maintained he did not commit the crimes, which came to light after one of the victims went to police when the other died of a drug overdose in 2014.

SYDNEY, Australia (AFP) — Disgraced Catholic Cardinal George Pell will learn Wednesday whether Australia’s High Court will hear an appeal against his child sex abuse convictions, the last possible avenue to clear his name.

Pell, a former Vatican treasurer, is serving a six-year sentence for sexually assaulting two choirboys in a Melbourne cathedral in the 1990s.

A High Court spokesman told AFP on Monday that Australia’s most senior judges will hand down their decision in Canberra on Wednesday on whether to consider Pell’s case.

It comes just over two months after the 78-year-old filed an application for leave to appeal with the court.

He lost a previous attempt to overturn the convictions in Victoria state’s Court of Appeal in August, a landmark decision that saw the judges split in a 2-1 verdict.

That division — which saw two judges back the jury’s verdict and the dissenting judge side with Pell — is at the forefront of his latest bid to overturn the convictions.

The long-running case has pitted the most senior convicted Catholic child molester against a former choirboy now in his 30s, who two of the appeal judges found to be “very compelling” and someone who “was clearly not a liar, was not a fantasist and was a witness of truth.”