News outlets in Australia have been prohibited from publishing important details about a case of church sexual abuse involving a high-ranking cardinal — including his reported conviction.

The country’s strict rules intended to preserve impartiality have barred reporters from publishing details on the Melbourne trial of Cardinal George Pell, 77, the highest-ranking Roman Catholic prelate to be formally charged and convicted with sexual offenses.

The Vatican’s third-most powerful official was found guilty Tuesday on sexual abuse charges — but the news had to be reported by outlets outside of Australia, citing unnamed sources.

Major Australian outlets on Wednesday didn’t report on the conviction of the former archbishop of both Melbourne and Sydney — instead cryptically writing that significant news happened, but that it was unreportable.

“A very high-profile figure was convicted on Tuesday of a serious crime, but we are unable to report their identity due to a suppression order,” Melbourne’s paper, the Age, wrote.

The Herald Sun in Melbourne published a front page that featured the word “CENSORED” on a black background.

One of the outlets to report on the conviction, the US-based Daily Beast, said that Pell was convicted of sexually abusing two choirboys in the late 1990s, citing sources.

In order to avoid legal trouble, the site “geo-blocked” the article so it would be more difficult to access in Australia and kept the headline “relatively neutral,” the editor in chief, Noah Shachtman, told Washington Post columnist Margaret Sullivan.

The suppression order was reportedly instituted by a judge because there’s another case against Pell, on other charges, moving through the courts.

A judge in the County Court of Victoria called for the gag order earlier this year, saying it was a way “to prevent a real and substantial risk of prejudice to the proper administration of justice,” The Washington Post reported.

In a front-page editorial the Sydney-based Daily Telegraph challenged the gag order, calling it “an archaic curb on freedom of the press in the current digitally connected world.”

“We’ve taken steps to fight the ban,” the editors said.