Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, Archbishop Emeritus de Bordeaux, admitted in a letter to have sexually assaulted a minor thirty-five years ago. A revelation that brings eleven the number of Catholic hierarchs implicated in such cases.
by Sarah Belouezane
The sky already well loaded above the Catholic Church, was further darkened on Monday, November 7. Standing behind a desk, particularly serious air and livid face, Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, archbishop of Reims and president of the Conference of Bishops of France (CEF), reads a text in front of journalists. “The approach that I will now share with the request of the one who does it is unprecedented,” he announces before a silence of meaning.
A press conference has been organized in a disaster since the plenary of Lourdes, an event that brings together the hierarchs of the institution twice a year, in the spring and in the fall. The speaking was only planned for Tuesday 8. That of Monday, improvised, resonates like an additional thunderclap in the middle of an endless storm. There, in front of the journalists present, the man of the Church announces having received a letter the day before, sent by Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, Archbishop Emeritus of Bordeaux. The latter recognizes an assault on it against a minor girl at the time of the facts, thirty-five years earlier.
“Today (…), I decided not to keep my situation anymore and to make myself at the disposal of justice. (…) Thirty-five years ago, when I was priest, I have behaved in a reprehensible way with a 14 -year -old girl. (…) I ask forgiveness. “The cardinal also indicates that he has made” both in terms of society and that of that of the Church “. Ironically, the ex-bishop of Bordeaux is a member of the Dicastery for the doctrine of the faith, a sort of ministry of the Holy See, in Rome, in particular responsible for questions of sexual violence.
“A shock “
las, Cardinal Ricard is not an isolated case. According to Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, six bishops “were questioned before the justice of our country or before the canonical justice”. A figure to which you must therefore add Jean-Pierre Ricard and Michel Santier. The latter, bishop emeritus of Créteil, was sanctioned in 2021 by the church in the greatest of secrets. The case, which concerned young adults, was not made public only very recently by the press, causing a great excitement in a Catholic community already largely experienced by incessant revelations on sexual violence within the Church.
Two others are no longer in office and are the subject of an investigation, according to the CEF. Another finally saw his case reported to the prosecutor. In all, they are therefore eleven bishops, hierarchs of the Church of France, to be implicated or to have been in one way or another for cases of sexual violence. A figure which is characterized by a certain diversity of situations: if some are directly accused of aggression, others have undergone proceedings for non-denunciation. André Fort, first, Bishop Emeritus of Orleans, sentenced in 2018 to eight months suspended prison sentence, and, more recently, Philippe Barbarin, Archbishop Emeritus of Lyon, who was released in 2020.
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