Olivier de Germay

Olivier Jacques Marie Certain de Germay de Cirfontaine (born 18 September 1960) is a French prelate of the Catholic Church who has been metropolitan archbishop of Lyon since December 2020. He served as bishop of Ajaccio from 2012 to 2020. Before taking up his clerical career, he served as a paratrooper in the French Army.

Early life and career Olivier de Germay was born on 18 September 1960 in Tours, France. He was the third of five children born to Christian de Germay, a divisional general in the French Army, and Claude Bullier. Beginning in 1986 he served five years as an army paratrooper based in Tarbes, taking part in missions in Chad, Central Africa and Iraq. He left the army with the rank of capitaine.

Priesthood He entered the seminary in 1991 and studied at the seminary in Paray-le-Monial for the first cycle, completing his second cycle at the Seminary and University of Pius XI and the Catholic University of Toulouse. Whilst living at the Pontifical French Seminary in Rome, he obtained a licentiate in moral theology from the John Paul II Institute of the Pontifical Lateran University. He was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of Toulouse on 17 May 1998. He was the second bishop to have been consecrated in Corsica in more than 200 years.

During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, he supported the government's restrictions on gatherings, but protested when its relaxation of its confinement policy ignored the recommendations of the French bishops in anticipation of the public celebrations of Pentecost. He warned the government not to "muzzle" the Church. He was installed there on 20 December 2020. He had not been mentioned in press speculation as a candidate for Lyon and Le Monde called it "a surprise".

Given the cases of sexual abuse and his predecessor's trial and acquittal, de Germay said he was "arriving on tiptoe" in Lyon. Within the Bishops' Conference of France, he is a member of the Council for Movements and Associations of Faithful.

Views De Germay is considered a conservative, and is outspoken on issues pertaining to marriage and sexuality. In an interview with Corse-Matin, when asked about the Church's opposition to condoms, he said that "he has something more profound to tell young people about the beauty of sexuality than essentially hygienic discourse." Commenting on clerical celibacy, he remarked that his relationship to God as a cleric can be on the "same order as a loving relationship [marriage]" and offered an indirect defence of the Latin Church's practice of mandatory celibacy by mentioning the struggles married Eastern Church clergy had confided to him.