FRANCE
ENCA
CLERMONT-FERRAND, France – A French court sentenced a priest on Thursday to up to five years in jail after finding him guilty of sexually abusing two young boys in the Central African Republic.
The priest, whose sentence may be suspended after two years, has also been banned from carrying out any professional activity that puts him in contact with minors.
The priest had admitted to one case of abuse in a letter in 2011 to the prosecutor of his home town in central France, Clermont-Ferrand.
But investigators had initially identified a total of four victims.
However they lost track of two of them in the chaos of the Central African Republic’s civil war, which erupted in 2013.
When he set out for Central Africa in 2007, the priest said he wanted to build a hospital and to “fight sorcery”.
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