An elusive French war criminal long protected by the Catholic Church will stand trial for his wartime crimes, according to a decree of the Chamber of Accusations, a high French court.
The case of Paul Touvier, the 77-year-old former head of the collaborationist Milice (Militia) in Lyon, was reactivated seven months after his release from jail in July 1991.
He is the third Nazi collaborationist currently under investigation.
Touvier’s case is unique. Twice condemned to death in absentia on war crimes charges in the late 1940s, he was hidden and protected by members of the French clergy until the 1970s, when he obtained a secret dispensation from President Georges Pompidou restoring his personal property.
By then, a blanket pardon had been granted for war crimes, and Touvier and his family emerged from hiding to reoccupy their home in Chambery, near Lyon.
Pompidou’s action infuriated former Resistance fighters. New complaints were brought against Touvier for crimes against humanity, a category not covered by the pardon.
Again he went into hiding, sheltered by his church friends, until his arrest at a convent in Nice in 1989.
Meanwhile, Cardinal Albert Decourtray, the archbishop of Lyon, opened the files of the archbishopric to a commission of historians investigating the links between Touvier and the Catholic Church.
The study, led by Catholic historian Rene Remond, found that the war criminal was aided by clerics ranging from local priests to an archbishop who was Vatican secretary of state.
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