PARIS (CNS/ACN): A French bishop on trial for covering up sexual abuse by a priest testified that he encouraged the priest to report the actions to civil authorities.
Bishop Pierre Pican of Bayeux testified on June 14, the first day of his two-day trial in north-western Caen for not turning over to authorities a priest who admitted sexually abusing young boys. The verdict is expected on September 4.
The prosecutor is seeking a suspended prison sentence of four to six months.
In an earlier trial, the priest, Fr Rene Bissey, was sentenced to 18 years in jail for the rape of one boy and the sexual abuse of 10 others between 1989 and 1996.
“My training never prepared me to have to face this kind of problem,” Bishop Pican said.
He said he told Fr Bissey that reporting the incidents of sexual abuse to civil authorities “would be a necessary part of his process of healing”.
Bishop Pican said he confronted Fr Bissey in January 1997 on one abuse case, but failed to follow up on other cases that the priest admitted to, reported Reuters, the British news agency.
During the second day of testimony, Bishop Pican said if confronted with a similar case in the future he “would take whatever steps were necessary to ensure that the guilty person did what was necessary with regard to justice”.
He later told reporters that the trial helped him understand the “immense tragedy that pedophilia is and the damage that it can do”.
The bishop promised to “do what is possible to establish a personal relationship with the families” of the victims.
The French Episcopal Conference noted that such an obvious disregard for the secrecy of the confessional endangered the constitutional right of all French citizens to religious freedom.
