11 French Bishops Accused Of Sexual Misconduct By Church Body

11 French Bishops have been accused of sexual violence in the church, among whom are the former bishops of Créteil and Bordeaux, Michel Santier and Jean-Pierre Ricard, all appearing in the list of respondents, AFP reports.

According to the report, the 11 French Bishops who were implicated in the report released on Monday 7th November 2022. The president of the Conference of Bishops of France Éric de Moulins-Beaufort revealed this during a press briefing in Lourdes.

“Today there are six cases of bishops who have been implicated before the justice of our country or before canonical justice (Church law, editor’s note)”, declared the president of the CEF.

“Two others, who are no longer in office, are the subject of investigations today by the justice of our country after reports made by a bishop and a canonical procedure”, he said.

Without going into details, Éric de Moulins-Beaufort insisted “on the great diversity of situations, facts committed or alleged”. “If the Church is made up of fishermen, it must ensure that these fishermen do not use their ecclesial status to do harm and particularly to affect fragile people or those made vulnerable”, declared Éric de Moulins-Beaufort. “She must accompany the possible culprits with mercy but also with justice”.
“It must also and above all start by protecting young and old and supporting those who have been victims in the womb,” he added.

The bishops had been meeting behind closed doors since Thursday, November 3 in Lourdes to work on “concrete proposals” to improve transparency in the measures taken against clerics. The subject was not initially planned on the program of this plenary assembly which brings together some 120 members of the Conference of Bishops of France (CEF) until Tuesday.

Jean-Pierre Ricard, a long-standing bishop of Bordeaux who was made a cardinal by Pope Francis in 2016, has admitted to a “reprehensible” act on a 14-year-old, the president of the Bishops’ Conference of France, Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, told reporters

The church was rocked last year by the findings of an inquiry that confirmed widespread abuse of minors by priests, deacons and lay members of the Church dating from the 1950s.

It found that 216,000 minors had been abused by clergy over the past seven decades, a number that climbed to 330,000 when claims against lay members of the Church are included, such as teachers at Catholic schools.

The commission that produced the report denounced the “systemic character” of efforts to shield clergy from prosecution, and urged the Church to pay compensation to victims.

All of the accused will face either prosecution or church disciplinary procedures, added de Moulins-Beaufort, the archbishop of north-eastern Reims.