Cardinal's cover-up trial a reckoning for French Catholics

The Roman Catholic Church faces another public reckoning when a French cardinal goes on trial Monday for his alleged failure to report a pedophile priest who confessed to preying on Boy Scouts and whose victims want to hold one of France's highest church figures accountable.

Nine alleged victims of the Rev. Bernard Preynat have summoned Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, 68, as a defendant in France's most prominent clergy sex abuse case yet. Another archbishop, a bishop and the Vatican official in charge of sex abuse cases also are among the defendants ordered to court in the southeastern city of Lyon to answer allegations of a cover-up.

"This trial is an action to move justice forward," said Alexandre Hezez, 44, who spoke to the cardinal directly about Preynat and is among those who brought the case to trial.

FILE - In this Aug. 15, 2016 file photo, French Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, archbishop of Lyon, attends to a mass for the Feast of the Assumption at the sanctuary of Lourdes, southwestern France. The Roman Catholic Church faces another public reckoning when a French cardinal goes on trial Monday, Jan. 7, 2019 for his alleged failure to report a pedophile priest who confessed to preying on Boy Scouts and whose victims want to hold one of France’s highest church figures accountable. (AP PhotoBob Edme, File)

Barbarin sought counsel on how to handle abuse accusations against Preynat from the Vatican official, Cardinal Luis Ladaria, who recommended disciplinary measures while "avoiding a public scandal." However, Ladaria won't be present during the three-day trial since the Vatican has invoked his diplomatic immunity.

It could not extend the same protection to Barbarin, the archbishop of Lyon since 2002. Pope Francis has praised him as "brave" and said French justice should take its course.

Barbarin, who maintains his innocence, encouraged Preynat's alleged victims to take their reports of being abused during the 1970s and 1980s to judicial authorities. Preynat, who is in his 70s, wrote letters to some families confessing the abuse, and is to be tried separately on sexual violence charges involving 10 children.

FILE - In this April 3, 2016 file photo, French Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, Archbishop of Lyon, leads a mass for migrants in the Saint-Jean Cathedral, in Lyon, central France. The Roman Catholic Church faces another public reckoning when a French cardinal goes on trial Monday, Jan. 7, 2019 for his alleged failure to report a pedophile priest who confessed to preying on Boy Scouts and whose victims want to hold one of France’s highest church figures accountable. (AP PhotoLaurent Cipriani, File)

The victims' allegation of a cover-up that allowed Preynat to be in contact with children until his 2015 retirement was thrown out in 2016 for insufficient evidence. They took the matter into their own hands and put it back on the docket through a direct approach available as a recourse in France.

The difficulty in bringing the case to trial reflects the challenges that victims of clergy abuse encounter. It also comes as demands are soaring for a public reckoning for both abusers and those in the church hierarchy who hid such acts.

"There has been a dramatic change in the zeitgeist. The #MeToo movement has come for the pope and his bishops," said Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of BishopAccountability.org, a victims' group. "The demands for accountability and transparency are coming faster than the Vatican can contain them."

For his part, Barbarin "expects to be acquitted," his lawyer, Jean-Felix Luciani, said in an interview.

He said his client "never obstructed justice" because the statute of limitations had passed on the acts in question by the time Barbarin was informed.

"The tableau depicting the Lyon diocese as protecting Father Preynat is false," Luciani said. "It's very difficult for him to be accused of things he didn't know about."

If found guilty of failing to report the priest's actions, the defendants could face up to three years in prison and a 45,000-euro ($51,300) fine. Barbarin and some other defendants are also charged with failing to assist a person in peril.

Numerous child sex abuse claims have been made against Catholic clergy in France since the end of the 1990s. In a first in Europe, a Normandy bishop, Pierre Pican, in charge of Bayeux and Lisieux, was given a suspended three-month sentence in 2001 for failure to denounce such crimes. The priest in question, Rene Bisset, was given an 18-year prison term.

Years of news about the Lyon case — due to the dozens of heinous acts alleged by victims and the high stature of Barbarin — have cast a shadow over the diocese and the French Catholic Church. Last November, the Bishops of France created an ambitious commission aimed at shedding light on sexual abuse of minors in the church since 1950. A report is due in 2020.

That same month, however, a Catholic priest claimed he was punished by church leaders in France after he gathered more than 100,000 signatures for a petition urging Barbarin to resign over his handling of the Preynat case.

The Rev. Pierre Vignon said he was told he'll no longer be considered for the church court where he has served as a judge since 2002. The 12 bishops overseeing southeast France where he ministers gave no reason. But for Vignon, it showed that church leaders are still divided about how to deal with sexual predators in the clergy and the whistleblowers who demand action against them.

For Barrett Doyle, the trial will put accountability for alleged injustice into the hands of the law.

"Whatever the outcome of the case against Barbarin, his presence in a secular courtroom ... will mark the victory of the rule of civil law over the Vatican's failed strategy of containment and secrecy," she said.

Nicole Winfield in Rome, and Elaine Ganley in Paris, contributed to this report.

NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — Former Cypriot President George Vassiliou, a successful businessman who helped to energize his divided island's economy and set it on the road to European Union membership, has died. He was 94.

Vassiliou died Wednesday after being hospitalized on Jan. 6 for a respiratory infection. Cyprus President Nikos Christodoulides praised Vassiliou as a leader who became synonymous with the country's economic prosperity, social progress and push toward modernization.

“Cyprus has lost a universal citizen who broadened our homeland's international imprint,” Christodoulides said in a written statement.

His wife Androulla, a lawyer who twice served as a European commissioner, posted on X in the early hours Wednesday that her companion of 59 years “slipped away quietly in our arms” in hospital.

“It's difficult to say farewell to a man who was a superb husband and father, a man full of kindness and love for the country and its people,” she wrote.

When he became president in 1988, Vassiliou lifted hopes that a peace deal with the island's breakaway Turkish Cypriots was possible after more than a decade of off-again, on-again talks. He swiftly relaunched stalled reunification negotiations with Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash, but they ended at an impasse that continues today.

Cyprus was split into an internationally recognized Greek-speaking south and a Turkish-speaking north in 1974, when Turkey invaded the island after a coup aimed at uniting it with Greece. A Turkish Cypriot declaration of independence nine years later was recognized only by Turkey.

During an interview in 1989, one year into his five-year term as president, Vassiliou said: "The only dangerous thing for the Cyprus issue is to remain ... in a vacuum, forgotten and with no one taking any interest."

But Vassiliou succeeded on many other fronts, using his skills as a successful entrepreneur to modernize and expand his county’s economy, even though he had been raised by parents who were pro-communist.

Vassiliou was born in Cyprus in 1931 to two doctors who were activists and volunteered their services to the communist forces during the civil war that engulfed Greece in the immediate aftermath of World War II.

With the defeat of the communists in Greece in 1949, the Vassiliou family moved to Hungary and later Uzbekistan.

George Vassiliou initially studied medicine in Geneva and Vienna, but he later switched to economics, earning a doctorate from the University of Economics in Budapest.

After a brief stint doing marketing in London, Vassiliou returned to Cyprus in 1962, and he began a successful business career that made him a millionaire. He founded the Middle East Market Research Bureau, a consultancy business that grew to have offices in 30 countries in the Middle East, South Africa, eastern and central Europe.

In 1987, Vassilou was elected president of Cyprus as an independent entrepreneur who also was supported by the island's powerful communist party AKEL, which his father had one been a prominent member of.

Vassiliou bucked the staid political culture of the time by making the presidency more accessible to the public and visiting government offices and schools. That prompted some criticism that he was turning the presidency into a marketing pulpit.

"I consider it the president’s obligation to come in contact with the civil service," Vassiliou told Greek state TV. "I call this communication with youth. Some call it marketing. ... I call it the proper execution of the president's mission."

He also pushed through key reforms, including imposing a sales tax while slashing income taxes, streamlining a cumbersome civil service, establishing the first Cyprus university, and abolishing a state monopoly in electronic media. To make sure the world better understood the Cyprus peace process, he widely expanded a network of press offices at Cypriot diplomatic missions.

Through his tenure, the island's per capita gross domestic product almost doubled, culminating in possibly his most notable achievement as president — applying for full membership to the European Union, a goal achieved 13 years later.

Vassiliou lost the presidency in 1993 to Glafcos Clerides, who appointed his rival as Cyprus' chief negotiator with the EU in 1998. A decade later, Vassiliou headed a Greek Cypriot team negotiating EU matters during reunification talks. He remained politically active, founding a party of his own and being elected to the Cypriot legislature in 1996.

He authored several books on EU issues and Cypriot politics; was a member of several international bodies, including the Shimon Peres Institute of Peace; and received honors and decorations from countries such as France, Italy, Austria, Portugal and Egypt.

Apart from his wife, Vassiliou is also survived by two daughters and a son.

FILE -Democratic Presidential Candidate Bill Clinton, left, meets with President George Vassiliou of Cyprus at New York's Waldorf-Astoria hotel, Aug. 9, 1992. (AP Photo/Mario Cabrera, File)

FILE -Cyprus President George Vassiliou, left, smiles as his son Evelthon, 17, is introduced to the daughter of Massachusetts Governor and Democratic presidential nominee Michael S. Dukakis, Kara, 19, at the Statehouse in Boston on Aug. 3, 1988 as Dukakis, second from right looks on, during a visit by the Cyprus President to Boston. (AP Photo/Carol Francavilla, File)