“I can’t accept it because in juridical terms, in classic world jurisprudence, there is the presumption of innocence as long as the case is open, and he has appealed,” Francis said. A court in Lyon ruled on March 7 that between July 2014 and June 2015, Barbarin covered up allegations of sexual abuse of boy scouts in the 1980s and early 1990s by a priest who is due to go on trial later this year. Barbarin, 68, the highest-profile cleric to be caught up in the child sex abuse scandal inside the French Church, received a six-month suspended prison sentence.
