He faces a potential maximum 50-year prison term after a sentencing hearing that begins on Wednesday.

An assistant bishop is set to become the most senior Anglican in Australia to be laicized.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said two weeks ago that Adelaide Archbishop Philip Wilson should have resigned when he was convicted in May of failing to report to police the repeated abuse of two altar boys by a pedophile priest in the Hunter Valley region north of Sydney during the 1970s.

The most senior Roman Catholic cleric to be convicted of covering up child sex abuse said Wednesday that he would appeal the verdict and resist public pressure to resign as archbishop of an Australian city.

The most senior Roman Catholic cleric to be convicted of covering up child sex abuse was sentenced to 12 months in detention by an Australian court Tuesday.

The Catholic Church estimates it alone will be liable for about AU$1 billion ($757 million) in compensation.

Pell's lawyers told the court that the cardinal plans to formally plead not guilty.

“We have concluded that there were catastrophic failures of leadership of Catholic Church authorities over many decades,” the report said.