A French court convicted the Roman Catholic archbishop of Lyon on Thursday of failing to act on historic allegations of sexual abuse of boy scouts in his diocese, handing Cardinal Philippe Barbarin a six-month suspended jail sentence.

Barbarin is the highest-profile cleric to be caught up in the child sex abuse scandal inside the Catholic Church in France. He was found guilty of failing to report allegations of sexual abuse in the 1980s and early 1990s by Father Bernard Preynat, who is due to go on trial later this year.

Barbarin, who moved to the Lyon diocese in 2002, visited the priest in his parish the same year but said he had not checked Preynat's file, where mail from parents denouncing the abuse was recorded, before doing so.

After being officially informed of Preynat's actions in 2014, Barbarin said he convinced one of the alleged victims, Alexandre Hezez, to write a letter describing the facts, which he passed on to Church hierarchy in Rome.

He removed the priest from his post in 2015, six months after being told to do so by the Vatican. 'It was to avoid public scandal, just as Rome had suggested,' he told the court.

He said he had 'never sought to conceal or cover up the facts' and that he 'didn't think it was up to me to file a complaint, especially since the victim was told it was too late to act'," he said on the first day of his trial in January, adding: 'I can't see what I am guilty of.'

Lyon prosecutors had previously investigated Barbarin but dropped the probe in the summer of 2016 without a detailed explanation. However, an association of alleged victims called Parole Liberée used a provision of French law to compel the cardinal to stand trial.

Additional reporting by Reuters.