But recent revelations of sexual misconduct by a cardinal and a bishop on Moulins-Beaufort's watch show how complicated, time-consuming and personal stamping out abuse can be.

These new cases, which come a year after a report that estimated that France had seen 330,000 ordained and lay abusers since 1950, have tangled Moulins-Beaufort in a web, caught between falling public confidence in the bishops' ability to solve the problem — which only increases the pressure to act — and a pope who firmly condemns clerical sexual abuse but offers only vague guidance when faced with concrete cases.

The revelations last week, both involving popular and well-respected clerics, were bigger than any cases to date.

Bishop Michel Santier of Créteil, an eastern suburb of Paris, had a reputation as a prelate open to other faiths and to people sidelined in the church. In 2020, he took early retirement, citing health reasons, but it turned out he had admitted to Pope Francis in 2019 that he had made at least two young men do a striptease as part of a confession.

Only after Santier later repeated his admission to his successor did the Vatican impose canonical restrictions on him.

The story finally came out in a Catholic magazine in October, forcing Moulins-Beaufort to acknowledge that he also knew the facts but could not publicize them because the Vatican hadn't.

Three weeks later, Moulins-Beaufort read out a letter from Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, who was twice elected head of the French bishops' conference in the 2000s, confessed that he had "acted in a reprehensible way with a 14-year-old girl" 35 years ago.

When Moulins-Beaufort unveiled the Ricard scandal, it came to light that several church leaders had been informed but had taken months to inform French law enforcement or the Vatican.

Bishop Dominique Blanchet, who took over from Santier, later described how he tried to keep a distance from his popular predecessor without divulging the reason. "I was in an untenable position," he said.

French Catholic leaders initially played down clerical abuse when news of U.S. cases made headlines in The Boston Globe two decades ago, but the issue has now gone far beyond the "few bad apples" stage.

"Neither ordination nor honours protect someone from making mistakes, including some legally serious ones," a worn-down Moulins-Beaufort said at the end of the French bishops' Nov. 3-8 plenary session in Lourdes. "Every person can be haunted by troubled forces that he does not always manage to control."

Yet Santier's and Ricard's cases show that the problem is as much one of transparency as of troubled priests. "Your trust has been betrayed. You feel anger, sadness, amazement. These feelings are legitimate," Rennes Archbishop Pierre d'Ornellas told parishioners in the Breton town of Montfort-sur-Meu.

D'Ornellas chose that parish because its pastor had just been jailed in Paris for yet another sexual abuse case. The Rev. Yannick Poligné, who is HIV-positive, was charged with aggravated rape, drug use and endangering the life of a 15-year-old male he met through the gay app Grindr.

At the news conference unveiling the Ricard scandal, Moulins-Beaufort said the total of French bishops involved in sexual abuse cases was now 11. But he mixed up the cases — for example, including those charged with nondenunciation of an abusive priest with prelates who actually abused victims — and thus created further distrust of the bishops in general.

Three bishops were not named, meaning more revelations may come soon. A church spokesman would only say that two were being investigated by French authorities and the Vatican, while the third had been reported to the French and restricted by the Vatican in his ministry.

The Rev. Hans Zollner, a Catholic expert on sexual abuse based in Rome, said: "The French bishops' conference should communicate names, if this is legally possible. Without this, there is a risk of bringing widespread suspicion to bear on everyone. … This is a rule of communication that we have not yet learned."

"How can we still believe that the church will get out of this, that it has the means to reform itself, when it is so deeply affected itself?" asked Isabelle de Gaulmyn, an editor and former Vatican correspondent for the Catholic daily newspaper La Croix.

"What do we see on the part of this ‘elite,' supposedly chosen carefully by the pope and his advisers? Perversion for some — serious, profound and criminal perversion. And for the others, an incomprehensible laxity that leads to immense helplessness."

• Tom Heneghan is an author at Religion News Service.
• First published in RNS. Republished with permission.

"We will not take money from the Church's yearly parish contributions, we will not use donations that the faithful make to us for [our missions]", Éric de Moulins-Beaufort, president of the Bishops' Conference of France (CEF) announced on Monday.

The Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in Church (ICSA) urged the Church to pay survivors with its own assets instead of relying on donations from parishioners. They insisted each person be compensated individually and said the reparations should be studied case by case.

Paying reparations to survivors without counting on donations from parishioners will cause the French Church significant financial stress.

The Catholic Church has been robbed of its assets twice in French history.

The first occasion was during the French Revolution in 1789. The second instance occurred in 1905, following a law separating the Church and state was instituted.

That means most churches belong to and are not owned and maintained by the Church but by local municipalities. And unlike most other European countries, the Church in France doesn't receive any state subsidies.

"The entirety of the Church's income comes from donations. We live off donations," deputy secretary-general and director of communications at the CEF Karine Dalle told FRANCE 24.

The total sum the French church needs to compensate victims is not yet defined, but it will be immense. Moreover, as other survivors come forward, the compensation is expected to grow.

"The 330,000 victims in the report are a statistic for now. We still don't have their names. We don't know who they are," Dalle said.

"We're completely in the dark."

It will be up to the Independent National Authority for Recognition and Reparation (INIRR), headed by lawyer Marie Derain de Vaucresson, to determine the exact amount allocated to each survivor.

"We will ensure that no one is left behind," Archbishop de Moulins-Beaufort told reporters after the annual meeting of bishops held last week.

In October, the ICSA released a monumental report unveiling the extent of child sexual abuse that has taken place in the hands of the French Catholic Church.

Part of the report included recommendations on how the Church should compensate the survivors.

Sources

• France24
• New York Times

In a statement on Friday, the conference said the French Catholic Church bears "institutional responsibility" for the thousands of child abuse cases documented in a report released in October.

"This responsibility implies a duty to provide justice and reparation," Moulins-Beaufort said.

He made the comments at the conference's annual meeting following a vote by the bishops.

In October, an independent commission published findings on child sex abuse in France's Catholic Church between 1950 and 2020.

The 2,500-page document details how an estimated 3,000 child abusers worked in the Catholic Church in France over seven decades. Two-thirds of the abusers were priests.

There were an estimated 216,000 victims of sexual abuse. The report found that the "vast majority" of victims were young boys from various social backgrounds.

Abuse victims had been invited to join the meeting, but many declined. Around 100 laypeople also received invitations to attend, but many couldn't due to the late notice.

"We had to clear our calendars at the last minute," said Dominique Quinio, president of the French Social Weeks. She is also a member of the steering committee of "Promesses d'Eglise", a network of reform-minded Catholic groups.

The invitations were sent out in the context of the recently published report on Church sexual abuse in France. The invitations were for the lay Catholics to join the bishops in various working groups, rather than address them as an entire body in general assembly.

But many of these laypersons said on the eve of the meeting that they wanted to help the prelates understand their feelings of "anger" at the findings by the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (CIASE).

"There is a lot of anger, especially among the pillars of the Church," said Sylvie Bukhari, president of CCFD-Terre Solidaire and a member of Promesses d'Église.

Sabine Adrien, a member of Altercathos, said, "In the wake of the CIASE report, I was torn between sadness and hope".

"But this hope was very quickly dashed by statements from bishops, which made me very angry. Especially so, since the commission also noted very recent cases of mismanagement," Adrien admitted.

According to the document, two bishops, one in 2019 and the other in 2020, arranged a rapid departure abroad for two Fidei Donum priests accused of sexual abuse.

"The laity did not wait to be invited to Lourdes to give warnings and express their discontent," emphasized Arnaud Bouthéon, who is involved in several ecclesial movements and structures.

"The laity can be given more responsibility!" he insisted.

"Share, delegate and surround yourself with more men and women," is the message Dominique Quinio intends to tell the bishops.

But many of the lay people invited to the CEF plenary fear the bishops will not really listen to them. They question that the laity are there just for show.

"I wonder about the process. Is everything already locked in place?" one of them wondered.

"I hope we don't just serve as a decoration," warned another.

Sources

• Deutsche Welle
• La Croix International
• CathNews New Zealand

The 120 bishops are meeting to pour over a shock report released last month that detailed child abuse of more than 200,000 minors spanning 70 years.

The findings of the Sauvé report on sexual abuse in the Church horrified the nation after revealing around 3,000 clergy sexually abused 216,000 minors from 1950 to 2020.

The commission stated the abuse was a "massive phenomenon" covered up for decades by a "veil of silence".

The nearly 2,500-page report found that the "vast majority" of victims were pre-adolescent boys from various social backgrounds.

The bishops conference agenda suggests the meeting attendees will "fight against violence and sexual aggression directed at minors".

The gathering, which started with a period of silence to honour the victims, is taking place in Lourdes, a Catholic holy site and one of the world's top pilgrimage destinations.

Some victims were invited to join the meeting. However, many declined, denouncing the decision to make the sexual abuse scandal just one of several topics — rather than the sole issue on the agenda.

Archbishop Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, president of the Bishops' Conference of France (CEF), who co-requested the report, expressed his "shame and horror" at the findings. At the same time, Pope Francis said he felt "great sorrow".

Jean-Luc Souveton, a priest who was sexually abused, said he would attend both a plenary session and a special session dedicated to the abuses. He hoped to make the bishops understand why more victims had not turned up.

"I don't represent those who are staying away. But, I want to make their presence felt if only to say why they didn't come," Souveton told AFP.

Many bishops declined to comment when approached by La Croix for comment on the report, but a few did respond.

Bishop Marc Beaumont, head of the Diocese of Moulins, did not hide that he feels as "helpless" as "a mouse in front of a mountain".

"It is a time of considerable trial, we are stunned," said Bishop Hubert Herbreteau, who has led the Diocese of Agen in southern France since 2005.

Bishop Jean-Luc Brunin of Le Havre was just as dumbfounded.

"I am stunned by the numbers. It's really frightening," said the 70-year-old prelate, who has been a bishop for nearly 22 years.

"I have mixed feelings," said Archbishop Herbreteau.

"I feel great pain, suffering, and even shame. But, at the same time, I realize that the work has opened, that there is a challenge to be met," he said.

Sources

• France24
• La Croix
• EuroNews

"Nothing prevents them from holding many more important functions in the workings of the institution, with everything being a matter of competence."

Furthermore, Moulins-Beaufort is not opposed to the re-establishment of the women's diaconate, so long as it leads to "more decentralized and more fraternal" organization of the Church.

Moulins-Beaufort made these comments in a recently-published interview in French magazine, Noosphère.

The Church "cannot act as if human beings were children who must be held by the hand," he said.

Although this is the way the Church functioned in the past, that's no longer possible "in a society where the majority of the people have received higher education, where religious faith has largely been chosen or freely embraced.

This is especially true since, according to the theology of the Church, all the baptized "find themselves on an equal footing before Revelation, since bishops and priests are in principle neither more learned nor closer to God than the laity.

"The voice of all the baptized laity, from the moment they try to embrace Christianity, should be able to count as much as that of the clergy.

"A challenge for Church reform is that we live synodality at all levels, and it must be rooted in fraternity."

This fraternity should include men and women, priests and laity. Until this progresses, "the issue of ordained ministries will only make the structure more cumbersome and impede progress," de Moulins-Beaufort said.

He can also envision "that the Holy See will one day be led by the pope surrounded by a college of cardinals where women's inclusion was possible."

Firstly, though, we must sort out a way for men and women to work together in Church structures constituted in fraternities, "or it will be useless," he said.

"In a complete synodal form, the voice of women should especially be heard more, given that the apostolic succession is reserved to men."

De Moulins-Beaufort admitted to finding it incomprehensible that women were invited to participate in recent synodal assemblies in Rome, but were not allowed to vote.

"To say that only bishops vote would seem logical. But ... priests and non-ordained religious brothers are allowed to vote, I don't understand why women religious are not allowed..." he said.

"It leaves me completely flabbergasted."

Source

• La Croix
• Image: Vatican News

The president elect of the Conference of Bishops of France says the need to shed light on the Church's sex abuse scandals "cannot be considered purely marginal.

"It's a systemic problem that needs to be treated as such. And we are determined to do so."

In his view, media coverage is a necessary aspect of opening up about cases of sex abuse.

"An important step is convincing everyone of the importance of the issue and, from that perspective, François Ozon's film Grâce à Dieu [By the Grace of God] has rendered a great service: it has enabled many people who did not want to face up to sexual violence to see what are its consequences."

De Moilins-Beaufort says he had his eyes opened to clerical sex abuse nine years ago.

"I had to deal with a case that had already been tried in 1999 for a priest who was already a member of the Diocese of Paris," he says.

"I met the families of the victims who needed it. This case completely opened my eyes."

That is when he realized that the Church's efforts to ensure the "accompaniment" of the victims were "insufficient".

He also insisted on the inadequacy, at the time, of the consideration given to the fate of the children and the long-term consequences of sex abuse.

These days more and more priests are suspended and asked to stop celebrating the sacraments in public.

"We are aware that the priest's spiritual power can create a type of situation in which, in certain cases, abuses are possible," he says.

"What has favoured these cases is a certain number of divides in the Church of France: part of the impunity [of an abusive priest] was he was considered a good priest, de Moulins-Beaufort says, referring to the case of a priest accused of many incidents of sex abuse against children.

He stresses that Catholic officials must collaborate with the Justice Department.

"We are quite clear on the fact that all cases need to be submitted to the country's justice authorities," the archbishop said. "We have fully understood that the prescribed action depends on the assessment of the judge and not of the ordinary citizen."

De Moulins-Beaufort defended confessional secrecy, while stating that "if someone comes and confesses that he has committed an act of that nature, you can only give him absolution if you are certain that he will denounce his act or that he agrees to speak about it outside of confession."

Source

• La Croix
• Image: Famille Chrétienne

His intellectual standing and realistic manner of tackling problems without excessive nostalgia for the past are said to have contributed to his election.

Speaking after his appointment was announced last week, the Archbishop said he is determined to handle issues pragmatically and promised to avoid using excessively churchy language.

"We will never go back to the village society that existed before 1965 where people went to Mass out of a sense of duty.

"Today, social relations are governed mainly by the search for pleasure. We have a duty to evangelise this new world."

Speaking of the Church's sex abuse crisis, he said: "We need to face the fact that too many priests have behaved badly with young people without anyone noticing or that they were treated as inoffensive once their misdeeds became known."

All France's bishops agree that it's important to move forward from that position, he said.

Last year he published a much discussed article entitled "Que nous est-il arrivé? De la sidération à l'action devant les abus sexuels dans l'Église" (What has happened to us? From bewilderment to action on sex abuse in the Church).

In the article he sought to analyse the reasons for the crimes and suggested various legal and pastoral responses.

At the end of February this year, after a series of damaging revelations about sex abuse were circulated, he wrote a letter to Catholics in the Reims diocese.

He told them of his own "disgust and discouragement" that the revelations of "concealed" evil had caused.

"God has not abandoned his Church but, on the contrary, is working to purify it, including from the evil that exists within it and that it had obstinately refused to see," he wrote.

Since his appointment as archbishop of Reims, he has also faced the problems that many of his confrères have experienced, particularly the dwindling number of priests and the collapse of the traditional "parish network."

In addition to chairing the bishops' conference, de Moulins-Beaufort is the head of the French bishops' conference doctrinal commission, a member of the executive committee of the Cardinal Henri de Lubac International Associate, and is an editorial board member for two significant journals - Communio and the Nouvelle Revue Théologique (NRT).

Well-liked by the lay people with whom he worked in the Archdiocese of Paris, he is known for his even temperament and easy manner, as well as his sense of humour.

"I have never seen him get angry, or at least it took a lot for that to happen!" a former colleague commented.

He is "great news for the French Church," and a "well-balanced person" even though some may "find him a bit stiff."

Source

• La Croix
• Image: La Croix International