Convicted French cardinal Barbarin to tender resignation to pope

AFP  |  Vatican City 

French Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, who received a six-month suspended jail sentence for failing to report sex abuse by a under his authority, is to meet at the Vatican to tender his resignation on Monday.

The private meeting is expected to take place around 0900 GMT, according to his diocese, with the pontiff to decide within weeks whether to accept his resignation.

The has previously defended the cardinal, saying in 2016 that his resignation before a trial would be "an error, imprudent".

is not expected to speak publicly on Monday.

said in February that "no abuse must ever be covered up, as has happened in the past", or be under-estimated.

Barbarin, 68, is the most senior French caught up in the global paedophilia scandal that has rocked the He said after his March 7 conviction that he would travel to to tender his resignation.

The court in the southeastern French city of found guilty of failing to report allegations that a priest, Bernard Preynat, had abused boy scouts in the area in the 1980s and 1990s.

The priest, who was charged in 2016, is expected to be tried this year. Barbarin's immediately announced plans to fight the landmark ruling, which was hailed by abuse victims as ushering in a new period of accountability in the It remains to be seen however if the will accept his resignation ahead of the appeal judgement.

His trial comes as battles to restore faith in the Church following a slew of abuse scandals that have spanned the globe, from to and the

Less than a week after Barbarin's conviction the Vatican's former number three, Australian Cardinal George Pell, was sentenced to six years in prison by a for the "brazen" sexual abuse of two choirboys.

Barbarin, an arch-conservative who took over as in in 2002, was an outspoken opponent of gay marriage.

He had long been accused by victims' groups in Lyon of turning a blind eye to child abuse in his diocese, which blighted dozens of lives.

"I cannot see what I am guilty of," told the court at the start of the trial in January. "I never tried to hide, let alone cover up, these horrible facts." But the court found otherwise, saying the archbishop, "in all conscience", chose not to tell authorities of the abuse allegations "in order to preserve the institution to which he belongs".

Two other senior French religious figures have been convicted of failing to report child abuse in the past: Pierre Rican, the of Bayeux-Lisieux, in 2001, and the former of Orleans, Andre Fort, last year.

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First Published: Mon, March 18 2019. 07:55 IST