FRANCE
France 24

Allegations of a cover-up in the highest reaches of French Catholicism have revived the spectre of clerical child sex abuse and cast a pall over France’s most prominent cardinal.

“Are we seeing the makings of a French ‘Spotlight’?” asked French daily Le Figaro on Tuesday, referring to the Oscar-winning movie that charts the disclosure of a massive cover-up of child abuse by the Roman Catholic Church in the US. While the comparison with the nascent French investigation is tempting, it is obviously a long stretch – if only because of the absence, in the French case, of a Spotlight-like team of investigative journalists uncovering the facts.

Still, the allegations have the potential to profoundly rattle the Church in a country where half the population continues to consider itself Catholic. In particular, they threaten to derail the career of France’s most prominent clergyman, Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, the…