'Sex abuse' priest dug up

A body supposed to be that of a French Catholic priest has been exhumed after a judge in Bordeaux accepted that there were doubts over the corpse's identity.

An initial examination failed to settle the issue and DNA tests are now being carried out.

The priest, Father Pierre Silviet-Garricart, was investigated in 1998 in connection with the alleged rape of a 10-year-old boy.

The boy had been a pupil at a religious institute he ran - a second pupil at the school then also complained he had been abused by the priest.

In January 1999, Fr Silviet-Garricart vanished from Rome, telling friends he planned to commit suicide.

Decomposed body

A month later, a decomposed body was fished out of the River Tiber and identified as that of the missing man.

He was then buried in south-west France.

But defence lawyers started questioning the identification after noting that the autopsy said the body was 5 cm (2 inches) shorter than the height written down on the priest's identity papers.

Judge Christian Mirande agreed there was cause for concern and ordered an exhumation.

Initial checks on the body found no traces of an ankle injury the priest was known to have suffered, so genetic samples were taken from the corpse for DNA testing.

Results will not be known until 10 December.

The Catholic Church in France, which has been accused in the past of tolerating paedophile priests, has issued a statement saying that it would not harbour child abusers, but that it was often hard to pin down the offenders.