In January 2020, in the context of the Preynat affair, Cardinal Barbarin was released for “non-denunciation of sexual assault on minors” in the court of appeal – a fact for which he had been sentenced to six months in prison. in March 2019. If justice had indeed recognized that the primacy of Gaul had a “precise knowledge ” pedophile acts committed by the priest Bernard Preynat, the offense of non-denunciation was then prescribed. Two years after the start of this affair with colossal media coverage, the name of Cardinal Barbarin is almost better known than that of Father Preynat… and he deplores it. Today, and although he has resigned to Pope Francis twice, Philippe Barbarin remains Archbishop of Lyon. Yet he lives far from the hustle and bustle of the city, in the Breton countryside, on the outskirts of Rennes.
“He saw the evil spirit at work ”
Friday February 12, 2021, Cardinal Barbarin agreed to confide in the Figaro. Our colleagues of course returned to the Preynat affair, which gave rise to a real "media-judicial storm ” around him, and during which we often “reproached Cardinal Barbarin for his kind of liberated naivety, his quirky humor, even his childish spontaneity ”. The clergyman remembers being tricked by some journalists who recorded it without his knowledge. But what he doesn't seem to have digested is the film directed by François Ozon entitled Thanks to God. Two years earlier, a court decision had authorized the release of the feature film on the big screen despite the request of Bernard Preynat, who considered that it was "breach of his presumption of innocence ".
But what clearly displeases Philippe Barbarin is the title chosen for the film … inspired by one of his own controversial quotes. “He also saw the evil spirit at work when his awkward phrase, "Thank God, Most of the Facts Are Prescribed" served as the title for a film with 915,000 admissions.”, write our colleagues from Figaro. The cardinal recalls that the sentence in question had also been included in the front page of “fourteen dailies showing the ugliest photo of [him] possible, on the same day ”. A detail that obviously does not pass …
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