On Tuesday October 5th a report revealed the shocking scale of child sex abuse inside the French Catholic Church over many decades. The report's authors estimate that 330,000 minors have been the victims of sexual abuse within the church since 1950, a majority of them at the hands of ordained clergy. Since the report's publication the overall reaction from the political classes, both Left and Right, has seemed timid. Some politicians, however, are calling for the courts to intervene and for the church to undergo deep reform. Mathieu Dejean, Mathilde Goanec, Pauline Graulle and Ilyes Ramdani report.
The French presidential election is about to get underway in earnest with President Emmanuel Macron finally set to announce his candidature ahead of the elections in April. According to opinion polls his two main rivals are both from the far-right: the Rassemblement National president Marine Le Pen and maverick polemicist Éric Zemmour. Yet both are set to be embarrassed by the far-right's long-held support of Vladimir Putin at a time when Russia has just sparked outrage around the world by invading Ukraine. As historian Nicolas Lebourg reports, the two candidates will find it hard to reconcile the far-right's general support for Putin's regime and the risk of being seen as traitors to French national interests.
He has not spoken about it publicly. But behind the scenes the French head of state Emmanuel Macron has written to the president of Uganda supporting the role of French oil firm Total in developing an oilfield and a lengthy new oil pipeline in the East African country. In the capital Kampala, meanwhile, the French embassy has been wholeheartedly lobbying for the French multinational. Yet the projects are opposed by environmental and human rights groups who say they are not just bad for the climate but will also displace thousands of local people from their land. Mediapart's environment correspondent Jade Lindgaard reports.
On September 29th 2021 the Élysée officially unveiled a new commission to help fight against conspiracy theories and disinformation. Officially called the 'Enlightenment in the digital age' commission, President Emmanuel Macron wants it to champion science, reason and truth and come up with new policy options in an era where social media in particular is awash with a bewildering array of views and theories. Critics, however, accuse the head of state of wanting to impose his own narrative ahead of next April's presidential election. Already the membership of the commission has been bitterly criticised, in particular its chair, social scientist Gérald Bronner. And after also coming under fire another member, Professor Guy Vallancien, a high-profile urologist, has just resigned from the body. Joseph Confavreux and Ellen Salvi report.
Germany’s social democrat SPD party came first in the country’s parliamentary elections on September 26th, garnering just more than a quarter of votes cast. It places the centre-left party in prime position to form a new coalition government, which would see Olaf Scholz, the party’s candidate for chancellor, succeed the outgoing Angela Merkel. But, writes Fabien Escalona in this analysis of the wider implications of the election, the knife-edge victory of the once moribund SPD is very much a relative one, and is far from auguring a resurgence of the social democrat movement in Europe, despite similarly fragile recent wins in Nordic countries.
The medical profession has been on a steep learning curve about the consequences, notably long-term, of infection by the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the Covid-19 disease it causes. But mystery remains over many aspects of the virus, and in particular about its effects, and true infection rates, among the very young. Caroline Coq-Chodorge reports from the south-east French city of Lyon, where paediatricians with the country’s second-largest teaching hospital group recount their findings.
The trial of 20 individuals accused of variously perpetrating or helping with the perpetration of the November 13th 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris this week entered its third week, in what is just the beginning of a legal marathon that is expected to last nine months. As part of its regular coverage of the hearings, Mediapart is publishing the first-hand reactions and reflections of seven victims of the massacres as they follow the court proceedings. Here, Nadine Ribet-Reinhart, whose 26-year-old son was among 90 people massacred at the Bataclan concert hall, and Georges Salines, who lost his 28-year-old daughter in the same attack, write about their initial experiences of a trial that has been almost six years in the making.
The mobile phones of five French government ministers were targeted by the Pegasus spyware sold to states worldwide by Israeli surveillance technology firm NSO Group, Mediapart can reveal. The presence of “markers” left by the spyware were discovered by an official French probe involving technical analyses of the devices. The development follows on revelations, first published in July, which found evidence that the surveillance tool was notably employed by NSO clients around the globe to target journalists, including two from Mediapart, politicians and regime opponents. Fabrice Arfi and Ellen Salvi report.
The state penitentiary at Huntsville in Texas is a “regional release site” for discharged and paroled prisoners. Every day, small groups of inmates walk free from the prison, most gathering at the town’s Greyhound bus station to begin their journey back into the wider world. In this award-winning short documentary (in English with French subtitles), which Mediapart presents here in partnership with VOD platform Tënk, US filmmakers Jamie Meltzer and Chris Filippone capture the released prisoners’ first moments of quiet reflection and freedom.
After a phone conversation on Wednesday, US President Joe Biden and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron appeared to have at least partly defused tensions over the new military pact between Australia, the UK and the US which entailed the cancellation of Australia’s purchase of 12 French submarines worth 56 billion euros. In this op-ed article, Mediapart’s international affairs specialist François Bougon argues that the diplomatic crisis of recent days should prompt a re-think of France’s global role and an end to the notion of its grandeur and exceptionalism, a heritage handed down from Charles de Gaulle.
