Struggling with AWS S3 Bucket Policy for Cloudfront distribution

I am trying to get my S3 content to display via Cloudfront. Unfortunately all that I see is a message stating that I do not have permission to access my files stored in S3. I have followed a few tutorials and really don't understand why it's not working.

Here is what I did:

Origin Domain Name: my_aws_bucket
Origin Path: /uploads      # This is the folder where my images are stored

I have told Cloudfront to restrict bucket access to my created identity, and to set up a new policy on my bucket:

{
    "Version": "2008-10-17",
    "Id": "PolicyForCloudFrontPrivateContent",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "1",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Principal": {
                "AWS": "arn:aws:iam::cloudfront:user/CloudFront Origin Access Identity **********"
            },
            "Action": "s3:GetObject",
            "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::my_aws_bucket/*"
        }
    ]
}

I cleared all other policie including IAM user policies (Just to be extra sure that nothing is blocking my newly created policy)

When I refresh my page, I however still only see image text. If I click on the image link in my page source I am presented with the following:

<Error>
<Code>AccessDenied</Code>
<Message>Access Denied</Message>
<RequestId>71C324761B2B3661</RequestId>
<HostId>
PUojsKhDRMcV1G2AItu8sBve5FdzJoq/ieecIrWVjFE5SpC2prxjz4PuI+nJLAHIgXcowtZY1M8=
</HostId>
</Error>

I have confirmed that the masked out values above matches that of my Identity.

I am pulling my hair out. As there is no reason that I can find why this shouldn't work and it's kept me busy for a few days now.