While the first report found Vanier perverted Catholic doctrine about Jesus and Mary to justify his own sexual compulsions and abuse women, a subsequent report discovered an even worse side to the great man.

The movement he created had at its core a secret, mystical-sexual "sect," and was founded for the precise purpose of hiding the sect's deviant activities from church authorities.

The findings have rocked the group to its core.

They are especially shocked as L'Arche commissioned independent scholars to investigate after receiving a first complaint from a victim a few years before Vanier's death.

Vanier's deceptions saw him eulogised by many as a "living saint". Among his admirers was Pope Francis, who thought of him as a "great" Christian.

What now?

The latest revelations about Vanier's fall from grace have resulted in L'Arche's national and regional leaders meeting for the past week.

They aim to chart a path forward, now that their official history has been shown to be a lie.

Their emotions are raw.

"I believed in something, in a vision that then is revealed to you and you're told it's not like that," says Azucena Bustamante.

She oversees five L'Arche communities in Central America. "It does frustrate me — the damage it has caused to a lot of people who believed in this, and then found out everything we were made to believe, it's a lie."

L'Arche's leaders have apologised to the victims, thanked them for their courage in coming forward and assumed responsibility for not spotting the abuses earlier.

They say they questioned Vanier repeatedly as soon as the first victims came forward and asked what he knew about the community founder French Dominican Fr Thomas Philippe's 1956 Holy Office condemnation, but he lied to them.

Jean Vanier

Vanier - a layman - founded L'Arche in 1964 in northern France.

He built the utopian-style, Catholic-inspired community into an international movement bringing people with and without disabilities to live together in a spirit of mutual respect.

Vanier arrived at his calling after joining a spiritual community, L'Eau Vive, in 1950.

Reports say Vanier fell under Philippe's spell and was initiated into his mystical-sexual practices.

In 1956 the Vatican forbade Philippe from public or private ministry, ordered L'Eau Vive dissolved and forbade its members from reconstituting the community.

Nonetheless, Philippe, Vanier and the women they had manipulated disobeyed and regularly met in secret.

Over time, Philippe resumed his priestly ministry as his Dominican superiors ignored the Vatican sanctions.

The researchers concluded Vanier founded L'Arche as a "screen" to hide the original L'Eau Vive group's reunification.

However, they noted Vanier's sincere commitment to help people who would otherwise be institutionalised.

Of the 25 women Vanier abused, none were intellectually disabled.

While Vanier and Philippe's deviant practices didn't extend beyond the core "sect" at the original community, the researchers are calling for vigilance, especially in the way authority and power are exercised in L'Arche's numerous communities.

Source

• AP News
• CathNews NZ

The report provides evidence that the sexual exploitation of women was the primary motivation for Vanier's founding of the organisation.

Jean Vanier, who founded the organisation in 1964, has been accused of exploiting at least 25 women until his death in 2019, according to the report.

The independent report states that Vanier created L'Arche as a "screen" to reunite a religious sect, L'Eau Vive, which was disbanded for its exploitive "mystical-sexual" beliefs and practices. These included "sexual abuse, collective delirium, and incestuous representations of relationships between Jesus and Mary".

The report has sparked several questions about how the "mystical-sexual" practices remained hidden for nearly 80 years as L'Arche grew worldwide and why they remained confined to the first L'Arche community in Trosly-Breuil, France.

According to Mitchell Atencio, who has been covering the story for Sojourners magazine, an influx of new workers and increased contact with government authorities, which resulted from L'Arche's rapid growth, confined and hid the small sectarian cohort in rural France.

The report highlights various reasons that led to the unchallenged reassembly of the former members of L'Eau Vive. One of the factors mentioned is the jurisdiction disputes that took place between the Dominicans in France, the local diocese, and the Vatican. Additionally, the report states that the Holy Office kept the reasons behind L'Eau Vive's dissolution confidential.

The executive director of L'Arche USA, Tina Bovermann, has stated that the organisation "trusts and painfully accepts the truth that was revealed." She also apologised for the suffering caused by the abuses and acknowledged that L'Arche was not able to prevent, identify, or report the abuses and could not stop them.

L'Arche praised for transparency

The report has already had a significant impact on the L'Arche organisation. L'Arche International is a member of the Commission Reconnaissance et Réparation (Recognition and Reparation Commission), an independent commission set up by the French Catholic Church to receive and treat reparation requests for abuse committed by clerics or lay people.

The commission's restorative justice process offers individualised reparations ranging from financial compensation to therapeutic writing workshops.

L'Arche has been praised for its transparency and candour in the investigation process, which has been described as a truth-telling exercise in establishing what happened.

Jenna Barnett, who has been following the L'Arche story for several years, has been working on a podcast, "Lead Us Not," which focuses on the aftermath of the abuse and healing for those affected.

The report serves as a stark reminder of the ongoing challenge of ensuring that vulnerable individuals are protected from abuse and exploitation, and that perpetrators are held accountable for their actions.

The report's findings that the L'Arche founder sexually exploited women will profoundly impact the L'Arche community. It will also raise questions about how similar abuses can be prevented in the future.

Sources

America Magazine