"Bishop sentenced for not exposing paedophile priest"/The Tablet

Bishop sentenced for not exposing paedophile priest
23 June 2001

http://www.thetablet.co.uk/article/5114

"A French bishop convicted of failing to alert the police to the crimes of a paedophile priest was given a suspended jail sentence last week, Alain Woodrow reports from Paris."

"The case of Bishop Pierre Pican of Bayeux, Normandy, is unprecedented in modern French legal history. For the first time, a bishop stood in the dock, on 14 June, accused of refusing to denounce one of his priests, Fr Ren? Bissey, convicted of 'ill treating and sexually abusing minors of under 15 years of age'. ..

"His attitude shocked many Catholics, especially the families of the children concerned, to whom he had addressed not a single word of sympathy or excuse. During his own two-day trial, the 66-year-old Bishop of Bayeux and Lisieux had to listen to the outraged accusations of three Catholic families whose children had been abused, and who refused Pican?s tortuous explanations concerning his silence, which he described as 'an option of conscience'..."