A French court has convicted the Roman Catholic archbishop of Lyon, Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, to a six-month suspended jail sentence, for failing to act on historic allegations of sexual abuse of boy scouts in his diocese.
The Cardinal is the highest-profile cleric to be caught up in the child sex abuse scandal, inside the Catholic Church in France.
He was found guilty of failing to report allegations of sexual abuse in the 1980s and early 1990s by a priest, who is due to go on trial later this year.
Barbarin has 10 days to appeal.
His trial put Europe’s senior clergy in the spotlight at a time when Pope Francis is under fire for the church’s response a sexual abuse crisis that has engulfed the church, deeply damaging its standing around the globe.
