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Cardinal Philippe Barbarin is again before the courts. It was this Thursday, November 28 before the Lyon Court of Appeal for not denouncing the actions recognized since by Father Preynat, a Lyon priest accused of sexual abuse of children in Scout camps in the 1980s and years 1990.
With our special correspondent in Lyon , Laurence Théault
The pale face and dressed in a dark jacket, Philippe Barbarin entered shortly before 9 am in the old courthouse in Lyon, which houses the Court of Appeal. Accompanied by his lawyers, the archbishop had to crack a swarm of journalists to win the crowded courtroom as in the first instance.
On March 7, the decision of the Criminal Court fell like a thunderclap : the highest dignitary of the Church of France being given a suspended sentence of six months.
The 69-year-old Archbishop of Lyon was found guilty of keeping silent about the sexual assaults committed on young Scouts, well before his arrival in Lyon in 2002, by Father Bernard Preynat, defrocked in July and who must be tried in January.
Had he acknowledged errors before the divine justice during a media mass in 2016, Bishop Barbarin challenges his guilt and appealed.
In front of a crowded courtroom, Philippe Barbarin repeated his incomprehension of his conviction. " I can not really see what I'm guilty of and what are the facts that are being blamed on me ," said the archbishop.
Legal issues at the heart of the trial
For the victims, the trial at first instance showed that the Barbarin case was serious while the preliminary investigation conducted by the Lyon prosecutor's office had dismissed it. According to them, this trial on appeal must now serve to advance society on this subject of the denunciation of sexual assault and rape.
When did the cardinal hear about this priest's past? The question of prescription or not is at the heart of this new trial. Since the beginning of the affair, Cardinal Barbarin has defended himself from having hidden anything from justice. Even when Alexandre Hezez, one of the victims of Father Bernard Preynat, entrusted him, in the fall of 2014, to have been assaulted by the father in the 1980s.
Asked why he did not denounce these facts to justice, Cardinal Barbarin repeated that he did not know " how to do " with old facts.
These facts being prescribed, the cardinal says he encouraged Alexandre Hezez to find other victims, younger, in order to launch a lawsuit. What the former Scout ended up doing in complaint in 2015 against Preynat, then against Philippe Barbarin in 2016 for non-denunciation. " It's a transformation of the truth, it never, never, never asked me to find other victims, " Alexander Hezez, a victim of Father Preynat, told the court, disputing a central element in the defense of the archbishop.
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