The former Vatican treasurer has been found guilty of abusing teenage choir boys by a court in Australia.

Cardinal George Pell was actually convicted of five offences in December last year, but details of the verdicts were kept secret for fear they would prejudice a second trial he was facing.

However those charges have now been dropped.

Cardinal Pell was in court in Melbourne to hear the judge's ruling that suppression order was lifted.

He was found guilty of sexually abusing 13-year-old choir boys 22 years ago in the priests' sacristy of St Patrick's Cathedral in Melbourne, where he was archbishop at the time.

He was convicted of abusing two boys whom he had caught drinking sacramental wine in a rear room of a Melbourne cathedral in late 1996, as hundreds of worshippers were streaming out of Sunday services.

Pell was a year into his job as the head of the Vatican Secretariat for the Economy, when the former choirboy first spoke to Victoria Police in 2015.

He told police he was sexually abused twice by Pell at St Patrick's Cathedral soon after the cardinal was installed as archbishop of Melbourne in 1996.

The most serious allegation was that Pell had forced the choirboy to perform a sex act on him after abusing his friend, ABC News reports.

He was also found guilty of assaulting one of the boys in a corridor more than a month later.

Cardinal George Pell arrives at the County Court in Melbourne, Australia | Image: Andy Brownbill/AP/Press Association Images

Pell's victim cannot be identified and his evidence was given in a closed court, which means journalists and the public were excluded.

"I had no intention back then of telling anyone ever," he told the trial.

"I was young and I didn't really know what had happened to me. I was worried about anything that could jeopardise my schooling.

"And what would I do if I went forward and said such a thing about an archbishop?".

The other boy who was assaulted died of a heroin overdose.

He had strenuously denied the charges, describing the accusations as "vile and disgusting conduct", but did not take the stand during his trial.

Instead, the jury was shown a video recording in open court of an interview Australian police held with Pell in Rome in October 2016.

Cardinal Pell is the most senior member of the Catholic Church, and Australia's most senior Catholic cleric, to be convicted of child sex offences.

In 2016 he took indefinite leave from his his role as economy minister for the Vatican to fight the charges.

In December 2018 it was revealed that Pope Francis had dropped the 77-year-old from his group of close advisers, without explaining why.

Cardinal Pell's conviction comes at a time when the Catholic Church is struggling to deal with the scale of sexual abuse by its clergy.

On Sunday Pope Francis vowed to confront the "evil" of child sex abusers in the church at the end of a summit on tackling paedophilia.

He promised to end cover-ups by clergy and give priority to the victims of this "brazen, aggressive and destructive evil".

A sentencing hearing for Cardinal Bell, who has been on bail since being found guilty, is due to get underway on Wednesday.

He could be jailed for up to 10 years for each of the offences of which he has been convicted.