As this year's Téléthon event garnered over 100 million euros, more than last year's total, the organiser of France's televised medical fundraiser criticised the Church for encouraging Catholics not to support it, writes Philip Crispin.

The Church objected that a proportion of the funds raised - less than 1.5 per cent, according to Téléthon's organiser, the French Association against Myopathy (AFM) - is used to finance stem-cell research. "This controversy provoked anguish for those who are ill and for their families," said Laurence Tiennot-Herment, the president of AFM. The church hierarchy, while not calling for a boycott, had insisted that it could not accept that it was right to experiment on embryonic stem cells.