PARIS -- The trial of a bishop charged with failing to reveal a clergyman's sexual assaults on teenage boys has left French Roman Catholics grappling with a painful question: Are confessions to priests protected under the law?
How much Bishop Pierre Pican, 66, knew about the priest's actions is not being disputed in the one-day trial, scheduled for today in Caen, a city in the northern province of Normandy.
Pican, a bishop from the nearby town of Bayeux, admits he knew about sexual assault of teenagers by one of his priests. The priest, Rene Bissey, has been jailed since October after he was convicted of abusing several minors. Pican's lawyers say he lawfully kept the priest's deeds secret.
For years, the question of the confessional's sanctity has entangled courts in several countries, including in the USA. But Pican is the first French clergyman indicted for concealing his knowledge of criminal activity. In America, it rarely is as straightforward as Alfred Hitchcock's 1953 thriller I Confess, in which a murderer confesses to his priest and then frames the priest, who is bound to secrecy about the truth.
In the USA, the First Amendment protects freedom of religious expression, including secret confessions, according to many American religious leaders and judges. But some U.S. courts have ruled that priests can waive secrecy for greater justice. Others say only penitents have the right to reveal confessions. So U.S. law varies from state to state.
Another complication: Church law is unclear about the secrecy of confession, especially when it comes to serious crimes, says Jean Chevais, attorney for the parents of three of Bissey's victims. The three are plaintiffs in Pican's trial. Bissey was not in a confessional when he revealed his crimes, further weakening the bishop's secrecy defense, Chevais says.
Prosecutors say Pican violated a law requiring people to report suspected sexual abuse against minors, an offense with a maximum three-year sentence and a fine of about $41,000. They say Pican knew for two years that the priest, Bissey, had assaulted boys in his Normandy parish.
During his trial last year, Bissey confirmed that he had confessed his crimes. He said his confessors had pardoned him and told him ''things would work out.''
When Bissey revealed his crimes in a private conversation to the bishop in 1996, Pican opted not to tell church authorities or the police. The only known actions the bishop took were to send Bissey for six months of psychological treatment and advise him to take a break.
Pican ignored an anonymous letter he received that detailed Bissey's actions. ''We saw it was anonymous, so we didn't read it,'' he told Bissey's prosecutors last year.
After his six-month treatment, Bissey was back on the job, working with youth in another Normandy community.
He was arrested in 1998 when one victim, still traumatized in his 20s by his experiences, went to the police. Other accounts of assaults surfaced after parishioners learned of the man's report. Bissey, 56, was sentenced to 18 years in prison in October for repeatedly raping a teenage boy and assaulting 10 others over a six-year period.
Thierry Massis, one of Pican's attorneys, blames ''a climate of panic about pedophilia.'' He also says prosecutors ignored a fundamental fact. ''The secrecy of confession is absolute in France. It is a sacrament,'' says Massis, who refuses to allow Pican to be interviewed.
''If you tell your priest you are cheating on your wife, or anything else, it is like a doctor's privileged information.''
The Catholic Bishops Conference of France says confidentiality is protected regardless of the setting. ''These conversations are absolutely secret, and cannot be abolished just because of certain conditions,'' says the organization's spokesman, the Rev. Stanislas LaLanne.
However, a statement issued by French bishops in November said, ''Priests who are guilty of pedophile actions must answer for them in court. They must make good the ill they have done and bear the weight of the punishment imposed by the Church and by society.''
Bissey's trial scandalized France, where 45 million people, more than 75% of the population, are Catholic.
Many asked how such crimes could be concealed in a town of about 15,000 people for so long. In Pican's indictment, prosecutors say the bishop ''acted only to prevent a scandal.''
Since 1996, 25 to 30 Catholic priests have been put under judicial investigation for alleged sex crimes, the first step toward trial, Tony Anatrella, a psychoanalyst-priest who consults the church, told the French Catholic newspaper, La Croix.
That figure is not large in a country with about 40,000 Catholic congregations. But for many, the clergy's scandals have been shocking.
One Catholic analyst says Pican did not behave badly. When someone confesses a crime, ''a priest should explain to the person that it is your duty to reveal your crimes to the police. He can also refuse absolution,'' says Henry Madelin, a Jesuit priest in Paris who edits Etudes, a scholarly Catholic monthly journal. Madelin also is a lawyer and expert on church law.
But Pican's court trial comes as the Roman Catholic hierarchy is reeling from recent pedophilia convictions. Even if confessions are secret, public outrage might shatter the bishop's defense.
''There's a big chance I will win,'' says Chevais, the victims' attorney. ''The French people are sick of their priests taking advantage of small children.''