Hervé Giraud

Hervé Jean Robert Giraud (born 26 February 1957) is a French prelate of the Catholic Church who has been named Bishop of Viviers with the personal title of archbishop. He previously served as Auxiliary Bishop of Lyon from 2003 to 2007, then as Bishop of Soissons from 2008 to 2015, following three months as coadjutor. He was Archbishop of Sens from 2015 to 2024.

Biography Hervé Giraud was born to Pierre Giraud and Marie-Thérèse née Minodier on 26 February 1957 in Tournon-sur-Rhône, Ardèche, From the age of eight he worked in the family restaurant where his father was the chef and his mother the waitress. He received his episcopal consecration on 25 May Within the Bishops' Conference of France (CEF), he was elected to a three-year term as president of the Commission for ordained ministers and laity on church missions for the CEF in 2005 and re-elected in 2008.

When Giraud, then 50 years old, had spent almost half of his life in Lyon, Pope Benedict XVI appointed him Coadjutor Bishop of Soissons on 13 November 2007 and Giraud succeeded as bishop there on 22 February 2008. In 2011, he was elected president of the CEF's Council for Communications. In March 2014, he served on the Ecumenical Jury at the Cannes Film Festival.

On 5 March 2015, Pope Francis named him Archbishop of Sens and prelate of the Territorial Prelature of the Mission de France at Pontigny. He was installed in those positions on 19 April. In a 2023 essay on Pope Francis' counsel on homosexuality, he wrote that Francis does not proceed from ideology but "in line with the search for a just Christian attitude in which he wants to lead the entire Catholic Church" and described the need to understand the radical nature of the evangelical requirement to love each person. In his view the way Francis raises the question repeatedly provides "the example of freedom of speech which invites us to break the deadlock of silence".

On 13 March 2024, he was named Bishop of Viviers, with the right to continue using the title of archbishop. His installation there is scheduled for 14 April.

Giraud was the first French bishop to have a social media presence, including the Twitter account @mgrgiraud. The brief homilies he posted there were also published in 2014 as a book, Twitthomélies. For presenting a new version of what a bishop can be, he has been nicknamed " 2.0", that is, "bishop 2.0".