Marin Sauvageon, the student from Lyon attacked in 2016, met Pope Francis privately at Casa Santa Marta in the Vatican this Wednesday, April 11, 2018, before the General Audience, which his mother, Audrey, also attended, and a group of the Central Region, accompanied by Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, Archbishop of Lyon, and Monsignor Pascal Roland, Bishop of Belley-Ars.
In its Italian edition of April 12, 2018, L’Osservatore Romano describes the meeting has having been “with open arms.”
Marin posted his impressions and a photo of his meeting with the Pope on the Facebook account that supports him. He comments: “An incredible meeting with an exceptional man . . . I have a thought for all of you on this very particular day for me. I leave full of strength, courage, and hope.”
The law student, then aged 20, was beaten up on November 11, 2016, in front of the Paer-Dieu commercial center of Lyon, for having defended a couple accosted for having embraced publicly: he tried to reason with several youths.
In response, he was hit on the head very violently with a crutch. He remained between life and death and then came out of a coma on November 27, 2016, but he has irreversible lesions. He still has to follow a long re-education course in Switzerland.
The “Head High” Association was created to finance medical research on the brain and operations of the youth from Lyon.
The trial of Marin’s alleged aggressor, a minor, will take place at Lyon from May 2-4, for “violence that brought in its train a mutilation or permanent infirmity, with the use of a weapon.”
