Priest

The priest was not seriously hurt; the alleged attacker has since been identified as a 31-year-old French national with no previous police record.

A 40-year-old Rwandan national, who admitted starting a fire in Nantes cathedral in July 2020 and who was given accomodation with a Catholic mission in SW France while on bail, gave himself up to police on Monday over the murder of one of the mission's priests.

An Orthodox priest of Greeek nationality was hit twice at close range by a man with a shotgun as he closed his church in the south-east French city of Lyon on Saturday afternoon, after which local media reported that a man matching a description of the assailant was arrested several hours later.

Bernard Preynat, 74, a defrocked priest convicted of assaulting at least 80 young boys between the ages of seven and 15 between 1971 and 1991, was on Monday handed a five-year jail term.

A conviction and six-month suspended jail sentence handed last year to Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, 69, archbishop of Lyon, for failing to inform the authorities about evidence of child sex abuse by a priest under his authority was overturned on appeal on Thursday, although an association of victims said they would in turn appeal the ruling. 

French Roman Catholic cardinal Philippe Barbarin, the archbishop of Lyon, who has appealed his conviction this month for failing to report allegations of abuse of boy scouts committed by a priest, said on Tuesday that Pope Francis has refused his offer to resign his post.

François Ozon’s film Grace a Dieu (By the Grace of God), which tells the real-life story of how Catholic priest Bernard Preynat sexually abused young scouts the 1980s and early 1990s, opened in French cinema theatres on Wednesday after a Paris court ruled against a last-minute attempt by Preynat, who has yet to be tried, to halt its distribution, and also against a demand by a psychologist and member of the Lyon diocese that her name should be removed.  

Footage shows 89-year-old priest ordering the infant he is holding at a baptism to 'be quiet' before sharply slapping his cheek.

Guy Coponet, forced by killers to film murder of Father Jacques Hamel in church at Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, says: 'I can't get over it.'

French interior minister was among mourners for Normandy priest who had his throat cut when two jihadists stormed his church during Mass.

Cardinal Barbarin had been accused of failing to remove a priest when he became aware he had sexually abused young boys 25 years ago.

Answering a call by religious leaders for the display of solidarity after the killing of a priest by Islamist teenagers, groups of Muslims joined Sunday Mass ceremonies.

A copy of the passport of the unidentified man was found at the home of Adel Kermiche, one of two men who murdered a priest in Normandy on Tuesday. 

Adel Kermiche, 19, used encrypted messaging service Telegram to tell fellow jihadists 'You take a knife, you go to a church, you make carnage'.

Adel Kermiche, one of two men who attacked a church in Normandy on Tuesday morning and committed the horrific murder of an 86-year-old Catholic priest in the name of the Islamic State group, was at the time on conditional release from preventive detention. The revelation that he was wearing an electronic tag with permission to leave his home near to the church on weekday mornings has caused a storm of controversy in France, and fierce criticism of the judges who decided his release from prison in March, despite the objections of the public prosecutor's office. Mathilde Goanec hears from fellow magistrates of what they describe as a fine line in assessing the true danger individuals like Kermiche represent.