Religious leaders have come back in front of the photo of a crying child and organized a repentance prayer, some kneeling.
Le Monde with AFP
Bishops, priests, leaders of religious orders and some faithful have “memory” to the victims of pedocinality, Saturday, November 6 in Lourdes, by collecting in front of a photo and organizing a prayer of repentance to the sanctuary.
“Here, together, gathered to receive the report of the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church [Ciase], we want to mark this place of Lourdes for a first visual testimony that will make memory of so many violence, of Drama and aggression, “Hugues de Woillemont, spokesman for the Conference of Bishops of France (CEF).
The photo of a sculpture representing a crying child’s head has been unveiled. Sealed on the wall of the hemicycle in which the episcopate meets, it prefigures the construction of a “place of memory”, decided in March by the bishops but whose modalities have not yet been defined.
The photo was taken by a victim and a text on “violence suffering” and the “suffering” of this child was read by another victim, Véronique Garnier, who regularly participates in the work with the episcopate and, Since November 2nd, the CEF plenary assembly that stands until Monday.
A divided home
“Little child (…), who has led you in his shameful secret? Who did you his thing?”, questioned Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, President of the CEF, while Véronique Margron, who presides over the Conference of the Religious and Religious of France, denounced “the prohibited word, outside as in” children victims.
The 120 bishops, who were not dressed in their liturgical clothes at the request of the victims, religious, priests and lay people then returned to the esplanade of the Basilica of Notre-Dame-du-Rosaire, Where, after the ringing of the Gla, they participated in a penance prayer, some on his knees, asking “forgiveness to God”.
“I lived these moments with a lot of emotion,” said M me Garnier at the end of this ceremony, stressing that it was important to “do us justice”. On the contrary, a person presenting himself as a victim, a child, of a priest belonging to the congregation of the fathers of Betharram, located near Lourdes, has shouted his “anger” on the esplanade.
“Repetition is Pipeau,” said Jean-Marie Delbos, 75, claiming not to be heard by the Church. He claimed in front of the press as his predator, “income in his community, be sanctioned and defocated”. Véronique Margron came to his meeting.
Friday, under the pressure of the victims and the report of the CIASE, which has thrown a raw light on the scale of the pedoeral crimes within the Catholic Church for seventy years, the bishops officially recognized the ” institutional responsibility “of the Church and the systemic character” of these crimes.