EDITOR'S NOTE: The High Court overturned Cardinal George Pell's conviction for historic child sex offences in a judgment handed down April 7, 2020. In a unanimous decision all seven High Court judges found Victoria's Court of Appeal should not have upheld Pell's conviction It found the evidence could not support a guilty verdict.

Cardinal George Pell has launched a final bid to overturn his historical child sex convictions on a simple proposition: is believing a victim enough?

Lawyers for Australia’s most senior Catholic cleric, who is serving a six year jail term for raping a choirboy and sexually assaulting another when he was Archbishop of Melbourne, lodged an application on Tuesday for special leave to appeal his convictions before the High Court.

The application for special leave, which is expected to be the subject of a preliminary hearing later this year, is the culmination of an extraordinary four-year legal saga which began in June 2015. That was when a former choirboy told Victoria Police that Pell molested him and a friend after Sunday mass at Melbourne's St Patrick’s Cathedral in the 1990s.