FRANCE
La Croix
Emeritus Bishop André Fort of Orleans was charged last Thursday with failing to report pedophile acts allegedly committed by a priest of his diocese in 1993. This comes as a relief for victims of the priest, who was finally charged in 2012 after three successive bishops failed to report him to authorities.
Gauthier Vaillant
The decision of the Republic Prosecutor of Orleans last Thursday to prosecute Emeritus Bishop Fort is the first such case for more than fifteen years.
The last similar case and the only other one to date took place in 2001 when Pierre Lacan, a former bishop of Bayeux-Lisieux, was charged.He was eventually convicted and given a suspended prison sentence of three months.
Bishop Fort, now 81, was bishop of Orleans from 2002-2010. He now lives in a retirement home in the sanctuary of Notre Dame du Laus in the Diocese of Gap in the Hautes Alpes region.
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