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.

Victoria Police planned to arrest George Pell as soon as he had given evidence to a Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse, a court has heard.

But the cardinal, who lives at the Vatican, didn't return to Melbourne to give evidence in November 2015, after citing ill health.

Instead, he gave evidence to the child sex abuse inquiry in February 2016 via video link from a Rome hotel.