French and canonical justice opened investigations against 11 bishops or former bishops in cases of sexual assault, including a cardinal who acknowledged “reprehensible” conduct with a minor 35 years ago, the president of the Episcopal Conference announced on Monday.
The former bishop of Bordeaux, Jean-Pierre Ricard, recognized “reprehensible” conduct towards a minor under 14 years of age 35 years ago, declared Eric de Moulins-Beaufortduring a press conference in Lourdes (south), where the prelates celebrate their annual meeting.
“35 years ago, when I was a parish priest, I behaved reprehensibly with a 14-year-old girl. My behavior necessarily caused serious and lasting consequences for this person,” the cardinal wrote in a message read by Moulins Beaufort.
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The 78-year-old cardinal He also assures that he made himself available to justice, both civil and canonical, and that he asked the victim for “forgiveness.”
Another of the bishops is Michel Santtier, whom the Vatican authorities sanctioned in 2021 for “spiritual abuse resulting in ‘voyeurism’ to two adult men” in the 1990s. The silence about his sanction caused great anger in recent weeks among Catholics and groups of victims.
In total, ten former bishops are accused, eight of them for abuses, such as Ricard and Santier, and two for not reporting the attacks. The eleventh, Pierre Pican, died in 2018 and was sentenced for not reporting the facts, according to the French Episcopal Conference (CEF).
Without going into details, its president pointed to the “great variety of situations about the acts committed or of which he accuses them”.
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The 120 members of the CEF They have been meeting since Thursday in Lourdes to work on “concrete proposals” to improve communication and transparency on the canonical measures taken against religious accused of sexual assault.
A year agoFrance knew the devastating scope of the cases of pederasty within the Catholic Church. An independent commission estimated that some 216,000 minors were victims of priests and religious in France between 1950 and 2020.
