An appeals court in France has acquitted a French cardinal of covering up the sexual abuse of minors in his flock.
The appeals court in the south-eastern city of Lyon gave no explanation on Thursday for its ruling.
Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, archbishop of Lyon, had been convicted in March and given a six-month suspended sentence for failing to report a predator priest to police. But Pope Francis refused to accept the cardinal’s decision to resign until the appeals process was complete.
The prosecutor’s office had sought the acquittal accorded by the court.
“This decision is logical,” one of Barbarin’s lawyers, Jean-Felix Luciani, said outside the courtroom. He said the cardinal had faced down “public rumor and calumny”.
Barbarin, 69, said at his appeals trial in November that he filed an appeal because “I cannot see clearly what I am guilty of”.
The verdict comes at a time of increasing scrutiny around the world of the Catholic church’s role in hiding abuse by its clergy.
The court had ruled that Barbarin, “in wanting to avoid scandal caused by the facts of multiple sexual abuses committed by a priest … preferred to take the risk of preventing the discovery of many victims of sexual abuse by the justice system, and to prohibit the expression of their pain”.
Bernard Preynat, the now-defrocked priest at the centre of the scandal, described to a court at his trial this month how he systematically abused boys over two decades as a French scout chaplain. Preynat said his superiors knew about his “abnormal” behaviour as far back as the 1970s.
“Had the church sidelined me earlier, I would have stopped earlier,” he said.
Preynat, now 74, faces up to 10 years in prison in what is France’s biggest clergy sex abuse trial to date. He is suspected of abusing about 75 boys, but his testimony suggests the overall number could be even higher. That verdict is expected in March.
The case against Barbarin hinges on a 2014 discussion with a victim, Alexandre Hezez, who told the cardinal about the sexual abuse he had been subjected to by Preynat during scout camps in the 1980s. Hezez felt the priest should no longer lead a parish.
Barbarin told the appeals hearing that he followed Vatican instructions after that discussion with Hezez. He suggested he could not have done more.
At the trial of Preynat, victims testified about how much power the priest had held over them and the lifelong damage that his abuse caused.
“I saw this community that admired this man, and I was his protege, his pet,” said one victim, François Devaux.
