07 Mar
News and Analyses, A Foreign Perspective
News and Analyses, A Foreign Perspective
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French cardinal convicted of child sex abuse cover-up
Jeff Pachoud, AFP | Lyon’s archbishop, cardinal Philippe Barbarin, arrives at the city’s courthouse to attend his trial on January 8, 2019.
A French court has found top Catholic official Cardinal Philippe Barbarin guilty of failing to report to justice accusations against a paedophile priest in his diocese.
In a surprise decision Thursday in France‘s most important church sex abuse trial, the Lyon court handed Barbarin a six-month suspended prison sentence for not reporting the facts in the period between July 2014 and June 2015.
The Rev. Bernard Preynat’s alleged victims said Barbarin and other church officials covered up for him for years, but the statute of limitations had expired on some charges and even the victims had expected that the cardinal would be acquitted.
The prosecutor had also argued against convicting, saying there were no grounds to prove legal wrongdoing.
The priest has confessed to abusing Boy Scouts in the 1970s and 80s and will be tried separately.
Barbarin, 68, is one of the most prominent Catholic figures in France.
The French church has been roiled in recent years by allegations against predator priests which have come to light in the wake of a global move by victims to come forward with evidence.
Clerics have been denounced in countries as far afield as Australia, Brazil, Chile, Ireland, and the United States, leading Pope Francis to promise to rid the church of the scourge that has done enormous damage to its standing.
Philippe Barbarin handed six-month suspended sentence after surprise verdict
Cardinal Philippe Barbarin in a Lyon court. Photograph: Laurent Cipriani/AP
A French archbishop has been found guilty of covering up child sexual abuse by a priest in his diocese in yet another crushing blow to the Catholic church’s credibility on the most damaging issue it has faced in recent history.
Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, the archbishop of Lyon, was given a six-month suspended prison sentence on Thursday for failing to report to the authorities accusations made against the priest.
“The responsibility and guilt of the cardinal have been confirmed by this judgment. It’s an extraordinary symbol, a moment of huge emotion,” a lawyer for the victims, Yves Sauvayre, said after the verdict.
François Devaux, who leads a victims’ group in Lyon, said Barbarin’s conviction was a “major victory for child protection”. He added: “We see that no one is above the law. We have been heard by the court. This is the end of a long path.”
Barbarin’s lawyer said his client would appeal against the verdict, which followed a trial this year. “This is a decision that is not fair at the juridical level,” Jean-Felix Luciani said. “We hope that at the next step, justice will be done.”
There was no immediate response to the verdict from the Vatican.
Barbarin, the highest-profile French Catholic cleric to face trial in relation to sexual abuse, was not in court to hear the verdict. Five other defendants were acquitted.
The archbishop’s conviction came nine days after it was disclosed that Cardinal George Pell, until recently the third most powerful man in the Vatican and former archbishop of Melbourne and Sydney, had been convicted of sexual abuse.
Pell is being held in solitary confinement as an at-risk prisoner in the run-up to his sentencing next week. An appeal against his conviction is expected to be heard in June.
Last month, another high-profile figure was defrocked by the pope after a Vatican hearing found him guilty of sexually abusing minors.
Pope Francis had been accused of failing to investigate or take action over Theodore McCarrick, a former cardinal and archbishop of Washington, despite years of rumours about his predatory behaviour with trainee priests.
An unprecedented summit at the Vatican of cardinals, bishops and other senior church figures on sexual abuse last month ended with the pope calling for an “all-out battle” to erase it “from the face of the earth”. But survivors were disappointed that few concrete measures emerged from the four-day meeting.
At his trial in January, Barbarin told the court in Lyon he had “never sought to hide, much less cover up these horrible acts”.
The scandal in Lyon emerged in 2015 when a former Scout went public with allegations that a local priest, Bernard Preynat, had abused him as a child 25 years earlier.
Devaux also filed a complaint against Barbarin, the priest’s superior, alleging he had known about the abuse and covered it up.
After a six-month inquiry and 10 hours of interviews with Barbarin, investigators dropped the case in 2016, saying the allegations against him were either too old or impossible to prove.
But a group of victims succeeded in having the case reopened, which led to Barbarin and others, including the archbishop of Auch and the bishop of Nevers in France, standing trial.
The head of the Vatican’s powerful Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Spanish archbishop Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer, was also accused of complicity in the alleged cover-up in Lyon. But the Vatican cited his immunity from prosecution to avoid a trial.
In correspondence with Barbarin about the priest, Ferrer advised the cardinal to take “necessary disciplinary measures while avoiding public scandal”.
The victims’ group received calls and testimony from 85 people claiming to have been victims of Preynat in Lyon.
After he was first denounced in 1991, the priest was prevented from leading Scout groups, but was later allowed to teach children and held positions of authority in parishes until the scandal became public in 2015.
Preynat has acknowledged abusing boys and is to be tried this year.
A film based on testimonies from survivors of Preynat’s abuse, By the Grace of God, opened in French cinemas last month.
Two other senior French religious figures have previously been convicted of failing to report child abuse: the archbishop of Bayeux-Lisieux, Pierre Rican, in 2001, and the former bishop of Orléans, André Fort, last year.
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The walrus, rusty patched bumblebee, Humboldt marten, leatherback turtle and a Florida sparrow face uncertain future
The Trump administration reversed an Obama administration decision to name the Pacific walrus as a candidate for Endangered Species Act protection. Photograph: Joel Garlich-Miller/AP
The Trump administration is eroding protections for America’s endangered species. Here are five species under threat in the age of Trump.
Walrus
Pacific walruses, which are found in the Bering and Chukchi Seas that abut Alaska, are one the largest flipper-footed marine mammals in the world, with males weighing as much as two tons. The animals rely upon sea ice for breeding, feeding and nursing their young, and a place to evade predators.
This has proved problematic as sea ice recedes, prompting the Obama administration to name the walrus as a candidate for ESA listing in 2011. The Trump administration reversed course in 2017, a decision walrus advocates called a “death sentence” for the species.
Rusty patched bumblebee
The rusty patched bumblebee has vanished from 90% of its historic range due to use of pesticides and habitat loss. Photograph: Sarah Foltz Jordan/AP
A crucial pollinator of crops such as blueberries, cherries and plums, the rusty patched bumble bee has vanished from 90% of its historic range due to use of pesticides and habitat loss. The Trump administration put on hold a plan to protect the bee before finally relenting following a legal fight.
The administration’s revised ESA regulations, however, could make it more difficult to safeguard habitat the bee will need for its recovery.
Humboldt marten
The Humboldt marten is found in pockets of forest in California and Oregon. Photograph: Charlotte Eriksson / Oregon State University/Charlotte Eriksson / Oregon State University.
A stealthy forest-dweller about the size of a cat, the Humboldt marten is part of the weasel family and found in pockets of forest in California and Oregon.
Previously trapped for their fur and, more recently, pressured by the expansion of marijuana farms in California, fewer than 300 of the martens remain. Under court order, the Trump administration listed the marten as threatened but conservationists warn this will mean little if its proposals to provide lesser protection compared with endangered animals go ahead.
Leatherback turtle
The leatherback turtle. Photograph: Mark Conlin/Getty Images
Having to undertake huge transoceanic journeys before arriving on Florida beaches to lay and hatch eggs, leatherback turtles have come under pressure from rogue fishing nets, pollution and now climate change, with rising seas drowning nests and increased sand temperatures influencing the sex of offspring.
“Ten years ago leatherbacks were doing very well, there were increases all over the Atlantic, but we are seeing huge declines now,” said Dr Justin Perrault, director of research at the Loggerhead Marinelife Center. “Sea level rise is a big problem in Florida, the erosion of the beach is getting much worse. We will make things much harder for the turtles if we don’t do anything about climate change.”
Following a request from a fishing group, the Trump administration is considered whether to downgrade the leatherback’s protective status from endangered to threatened. Further habitat may be required for the species if it is lost due to climate change, although the proposed Fish and Wildlife Service regulations would do away with any requirement to do this.
Florida grasshopper sparrow
Conservationists have warned that the Florida grasshopper sparrow is the most likely candidate to become the first US bird to go extinct in more than 30 years.
Once a regular sight in central Florida, the species has entered a steep decline since the 1970s as the region was intensively developed for farming and housing. Just 22 females and 53 males were found in the wild in a survey taken in 2017.
A captive breeding program was established in 2014 to revive the bird, which is just a few inches long and weighs barely an ounce. The Trump administration has eliminated federal funding for this program.
And:
World Politics
United States
DNC chairman Tom Perez cited New Yorker exposé on depth of administration’s ‘inappropriate’ ties to news network
Vivian Ho in Oakland (now) and Sabrina Siddiqui in Washington and Erin Durkin in New York (earlier)
Fox News debate moderators Chris Wallace, Megyn Kelly and Bret Baier in Des Mones, Iowa on 28 January 2016. Photograph: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA
Evening summary
