An Australian appeals court Wednesday upheld convictions against Cardinal George Pell, the most senior Catholic to be found guilty of sexually abusing children. The decision brought cheers from scores of abuse survivors and victims' advocates demonstrating outside court.

The Victoria state Court of Appeal in a 2-1 ruling rejected Pell's appeal of a unanimous jury verdict in December that Pope Francis' former finance minister was guilty of molesting two 13-year-old choirboys in Melbourne's St. Patrick's Cathedral more than two decades ago.

Pell's lawyers will examine the judgment and consider an appeal to the High Court, Australia's final arbiter, his spokeswoman Katrina Lee said in a statement.

"Cardinal Pell is obviously disappointed with the decision today," the statement said, adding that he maintains his innocence.

He was sentenced to six years in prison in March and is no longer a member of Francis' Council of Cardinals or a Vatican official. Prime Minister Scott Morrison said soon after the appeal was rejected that Pell would be stripped of his Order of Australia honor.

Pell, 78, showed no emotion when Chief Justice Anne Ferguson read the verdict to a packed courtroom but bowed his head moments later. He wore a cleric's collar but not his cardinal's ring. Pell had arrived at the court in a prison van and was handcuffed as he was led away by a guard.

The Vatican is conducting its own investigation into sex abuse allegations against Pell and is expected to comment on the ruling later Wednesday.

Cardinal George Pell's appeal against his convictions for child molestation was largely a question of who the jury should have believed, his accuser or a Malta-born senior priest whose church role was likened to Pell's bodyguard.

Pell's accuser was a 13-year-old choirboy when he alleged that he was abused by then-Melbourne Archbishop Pell at the city's St. Patrick's Cathedral in December 1996 and February 1997. Monsignor Charles Portelli was a master of ceremonies at the 11 a.m. Sunday Masses where the choir sang.

A chorister in the 1990s, David Dearing, told police that Portelli, Pell's right-hand man, was always with the archbishop "like his bodyguard."

When the jury of eight men and four women that convicted Pell began their deliberations, they asked to see again video recordings of the testimonies of both the complainant, who cannot be identified, and Portelli.

Portelli had testified that he had been with Pell chatting to churchgoers on the steps of the cathedral on the only two Sundays in December 1996 when Pell could potentially have been molesting the two choirboys. His testimony that Pell was on the steps in the moments for around 10 minutes after those Masses has been described as alibi evidence.

The Maltese-born immigrant also testified that he would have seen Pell squeeze a choirboy's genitals as he shoved the teen against a cathedral wall if the indecent assault had happened after a Mass in February 1997 as the complainant had testified.

"To do so, he (Pell) would have had to push in front of me," Portelli said in a television interview in April, in which he said Pell was innocent.

The Australian Catholic Bishops' Conference, a body representing all the nation's Catholic bishops, said all Australians must be equal under the law and they accept the court's verdict.

"I respectfully receive the court's decision and I encourage everyone to do the same," Melbourne Archbishop Peter Comensoli said in a statement.

Clerical sexual abuse and the Catholic Church's handling of such cases worldwide have thrown Francis' papacy into turmoil.

In a little more than a year, the pope has acknowledged he made "grave errors" in Chile's worst cover-up, Pell was convicted of abuse, a French cardinal was convicted of failing to report a pedophile, and a third cardinal, former U.S. church leader Theodore McCarrick, was defrocked after a Vatican investigation determined he molested children and adults.

Ferguson said she and President of the Court of Appeal Chris Maxwell "decided that it was open to the jury to be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that Cardinal Pell was guilty."

The two judges "accepted the prosecution's submission that the complainant was a very compelling witness, clearly not a liar, was not a fantasist and was a witness of truth," Ferguson said.

The dissenting judge, Mark Weinberg, "could not exclude as a reasonable possibility that some of what the complainant said was concocted," particularly in relation to the charge that Pell had squeezed the boy's genitals and shoved him against a cathedral corridor wall as they passed in the midst of the choir moments after a Mass, she said.

"Justice Weinberg found that the complainant's account of the second incident was entirely implausible and quite unconvincing," Ferguson said. The full, 325-page ruling was published after she summarized the court's findings.

One of the choirboys, identified by the sentencing judge as J.J., was the key prosecution witness. His friend, identified as M.R., died of a heroin overdose in 2014 at the age of 31 without ever complaining he had been abused. Neither victim can be named.

J.J. said in a statement on Wednesday that he "felt a responsibility to come forward" after attending his friend's funeral.

"The criminal process has been stressful. The journey has taken me to places that, in my darkest moments, I feared I could not return from," he said in a statement released by his lawyer.

"I am grateful for a legal system that everyone can believe in, where everybody is equal before the law and no one is above the law," he added.

The victim said he was relieved by the verdict and, "I just hope that it's all over now."

The father of the deceased victim shed tears of relief in the courtroom when Pell's appeal was denied, his lawyer said.

Lawyer Lisa Flynn said the father had an "extremely tough wait" for the judgment against Pell and the court made the correct decision. "The disgraced cardinal is in the right place behind bars."

Pell must serve a minimum of three years and eight months of his six-year sentence before he will be eligible for parole. He has been held in a Melbourne prison in protective custody as a convicted pedophile.