A French cardinal accused of covering up the sexual abuse of minors has had his conviction overturned after an appeals court found no “intentional element” in his failure to report a predatory priest to the police.

Philippe Barbarin, the archbishop of Lyon and the most high-profile French Catholic cleric to face trial in relation to sexual abuse, was convicted last year and given a six-month suspended sentence. He offered his resignation to Pope Francis, who refused to accept it until the appeals process was complete.

Jean Felix Luciani, one of the cardinal’s lawyers, said the appeal court’s decision was “logical”. Barbarin had faced down “public rumour and calumny,” Luciani said outside the appeals court in Lyon.

The verdict and accompanying 38-page document detailing the court’s reasons will dismay abuse survivors, who had hailed Barbarin’s conviction as a victory for child protection.

At the time, François Devaux, who leads a victims’ group in Lyon, said: “We see that no one is above the law. We have been heard by the court. This is the end of a long path.”

At his appeal hearing in November, Barbarin, 69, told the court: “I cannot see clearly what I am guilty of.”

The acquittal will come as a relief to the Vatican, which has been engulfed by sexual abuse scandals over recent years. Officials will now be watching closely the appeal by Cardinal George Pell, the most senior Catholic figure in the world to be jailed for child sexual abuse, which is expected to be heard in the coming weeks.

The Vatican is preparing to release the results of an internal investigation into Theodore McCarrick, a former cardinal and archbishop who was defrocked last year after the church found he had sexually abused minors.

At the end of Barbarin’s trial last March, the court ruled that the cardinal, “in wanting to avoid scandal caused by the facts of multiple sexual abuses committed by a priest … preferred to take the risk of preventing the discovery of many victims of sexual abuse by the justice system, and to prohibit the expression of their pain.”

Bernard Preynat, the now defrocked priest at the centre of the scandal, described to a court at his trial this month how he systematically abused boys over two decades as a French scout chaplain. Preynat said his superiors knew about his “abnormal” behaviour as far back as the 1970s. “Had the church sidelined me earlier, I would have stopped earlier,” he said.

Preynat, now 74, faces up to 10 years in prison in what is France’s biggest clergy sex abuse trial to date. He is suspected of abusing about 75 boys, but his testimony suggests the overall number could be even higher. That verdict is expected in March.

At Preynat’s trial, survivors testified about how much power the priest held over them and the lifelong damage that his abuse caused. “I saw this community that admired this man, and I was his protege, his pet,” said Devaux.



