Who is Jean-Michel Di Falco, the former bishop chosen to officiate at the actor’s funeral?

The 82-year-old clergyman was close to the artist and is known as the bishop of the stars. He is also accused of sexual assault on a minor.

The funeral of Alain Delon, who died on Sunday at the age of 88, will take place on Saturday, August 24 in the private chapel of his property in Douchy (Loiret). It will be celebrated by the former bishop Jean-Michel Di Falco. An organization in accordance with the wishes of the deceased, who had chosen in advance for this ceremony the former bishop of Gap, long considered the chaplain of celebrities.

A very high-profile figure in the Church

Jean-Michel Di Falco was for a long time one of the most media-friendly bishops in France. Ordained a priest in June 1968, a teacher in Catholic education from 1969 to 1984, he became spokesperson for the Conference of Bishops of France for a long term, from 1987 to 1996. He was then appointed auxiliary bishop of Paris in 1997, alongside Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, then became bishop of Gap and Embrun in 2003. Far from Paris, he regularly made headlines for his diocese, taking up the advertising image of a beer in 2007 to promote a place of pilgrimage, and exhibiting in the cathedral, in 2009, a Pietà representing Christ dead in an electric chair.

Author of several works and director of the journal Cinema Cardsa religious columnist on RTL in the 1980s and co-founder of the Catholic television channel KTO in 1999, he has multiplied interventions on various fronts. In 2009, when Pope Benedict XVI affirmed that the use of condoms “worsens the AIDS problem”he distances himself by speaking of “one sentence too many”.

On another note, in 2010 he launched the group Les Prêtres, whose three albums, mixing church chants, classical music and pop hits, were very successful.

The “Bishop of the Stars”

The former bishop, who retired in 2017 after reaching the age limit of 75, knew Alain Delon “for a very long time”The actor was indeed a believer even if, questioned on this point by Paris Match In 2018, he replied: “I am less so than when I was young. I don’t really believe in God, but my passion is Mary.”

A friend of celebrities and politicians, Jean-Michel Di Falco has acquired over the years the nickname of bishop of the stars. He has officiated at the funerals of businessman Jean-Luc Lagardère, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing in December 2020, singer Charles Trenet, director Maurice Pialat, actors Jean-Claude Brialy and Mireille Darc – who was Alain Delon’s partner – as well as the wedding of singer Pascal Obispo in 2015.

“I was labeled a socialite, which is not true.”the bishop said in 2004 in the book I don’t think so either.long joint interview with Frédéric Beigbeder. He rejected the nickname of“bishop of petits fours” which could have been attached to him regarding this “chain of friendship that has been woven over the years in the world of media, cinema and entertainment, and the political world too.”

He is accused of sexual violence against a minor

The bishop emeritus is the target of accusations of rape and sexual assault on a minor in the 1970s, which have led to a long legal saga since 2001, at a time when the Church is faced with several cases of pedophilia.

An actor now in his sixties accuses the former priest of the Paris diocese of rape and sexual assault between 1972 and 1975, when the cleric was the director of the private Parisian college Saint-Thomas-d’Aquin. The former priest of the Paris diocese has always denied these allegations, which were dismissed in 2002 due to the statute of limitations in criminal proceedings and which the plaintiff decided to bring in civil proceedings, where the proceedings are still ongoing.