Among those prosecuted are Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, who has resigned and apologized to the victim, as well as Michel Santier, former bishop of Créteil, sanctioned in October 2021 by the Vatican.
Eleven French bishops and former bishops are being investigated by the French justice or the canonical justice for cases of sexual abuse, announced Monday in Lourdes (southwest of the country) the president of the French Episcopal Conference (CEF), Éric de Moulins-Beauffort.
The CEF specified that, of the eleven religious processed, one has died, eight are being investigated “for abuses” and two have already been investigated for “omission of denunciation.” Of these last two cases, one was convicted in 2018 and the other acquitted in 2020. Those involved include Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, former bishop of Bordeaux, and Michel Santier, former bishop of Créteil, a town on the outskirts of Paris.
“35 years ago, when I was a parish priest, I behaved reprehensibly with a 14-year-old girl. My behavior necessarily had serious and lasting consequences for this person », confessed this Monday through a statement Cardinal Ricard, who apologized to the victim and her family. The former bishop of Bordeaux also announced that he resigns from his duties and places himself at the disposal of the French and ecclesiastical justice.
Michel Santier, for his part, was sanctioned in October 2021 by the Vatican for “spiritual abuse resulting in ‘voyeurism'” against two young adults. The events occurred in the 1990s when he was a priest in Coutances (western France). The former bishop of Créteil, who resigned in 2020 “for health reasons and other difficulties”, acknowledged being guilty of “spiritual abuse for sexual purposes”.
The French press did not know until October of this year that Santier had been sanctioned by the Holy See. The silence maintained by the bishops for a year about his sanction has outraged Catholics and associations in recent weeks. Following these revelations, three other victims have stepped forward.
France discovered in October 2021 with horror the extent of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church. Some 216,000 minors were victims of sexual abuse (touching, assault or rape) by Catholic priests or religious between 1950 and 2020, according to a report by the independent Commission on abuses in the Church (Ciase, for its acronym in French).
The number of victims could reach 330,000 if we take into account the attacks committed by lay pederasts who worked in Catholic schools, catechesis or youth movements, according to the report.
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