The French Church assesses how to react to the report which revealed 216,000 sexual abuse of minors: “It is an overwhelming number”

“An earthquake”, “a hurricane”, “a commotion”. This is how the French press describes the report of the news on the abuse of minors victims of sexual violence in the Church over the past 70 years in the country.

After releasing the damning report on the Church, officials at the Conference of Religious and Bishops’ Conference, which hold their plenary assembly in November, prepare a response to the serious allegations. “The scale of the phenomenon that you describe is overwhelming” and the number of victims “overwhelms us and exceeds what one might suppose”, commented Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, President of the French Episcopal Conference (CEF), before receiving the document.

The Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (Ciase), chaired by the former vice-president of the Council of State, Jean-Marc Sauvé, publicly presented his report of 485 pages and 2000 annexes, Tuesday, October 5 in Paris.

In particular, it reveals the scale of the number of victims of sexual violence since 1950, estimated at 330,000. His “minimum estimate” also reports 2,900 to 3,200 male sexual predators since 1970, among priests and religious. This is what should be remembered from the work of this commission.

Stunned, the officials of the French episcopate, from the headquarters of the avenue de Breteuil, know that they must work for an explanation, a remedy and a solution. On November 8, in Lourdes, they found public opinion, shocked like them by the scope of the conclusions. They hope to end their plenary session with the adoption of a new battery of measures against sexual abuse.

However, Moulins-Beaufort of the Episcopal Conference admitted that Before being able to respond to this “horrible” condemnation, “the Church must apologize to the victims”. He praised the “courage and inner strength” of those who dared to stand up to the Church for this “harsh, severe, truly unbearable” revelation of the abuse of young children by the clergy.

Compensation

In the meantime, the question that arises is: Who will compensate the victims? 216,000 people who have been the object of violence or sexual assault in their childhood by religious since the 1950s, 330,000 if we include people assaulted by lay people who work in institutions of the Catholic Church . This problem, which has long concerned the Church, already denounced in the past, has led to the creation of a specific endowment fund.

Contributed by bishops, priests and parishioners, this fund is the one that should compensate, from 2022, the victims who claim it. However, the contributions face the massive number of complaints, and consequently, claims. These one-off savings are limited given the scale of the repairs.

In this regard, the Archbishop of Strasbourg, Monsignor Luc Ravel, recognized that “the path that opens before us is abysmal. The ecclesiastical leadership had calculated at five, six, eight million euros, sufficient funds to civilly repair the damage, which could now amount to “hundreds of millions of euros”.

But there are several issues. La Ciase formulated 45 recommendations on various dimensions of the activity of the Church. One of them talks about the origin of the money to cover the claims. In this sense, he indicates that the reparations are financed “with the assets of the aggressors and the Church of France” and not with donations from the faithful.

For the French Episcopal Conference (CEF), this is a serious obstacle. Moulins-Beaufort, deplores the fantasies about the wealth of the Catholic Church and recalls that “the institution lives only on donations from the faithful”. “All of our resources are donations from the faithful. We have no other resources ”. Therefore, asking diocesan associations to finance these reparations is in fact asking the faithful to pay.

It is estimated that donations from all dioceses barely exceed 500 million euros per year. Half of this money goes to the salaries of 15,000 priests and 8,000 lay people. A third, 30%, for real estate, maintenance of diocesan churches and parish buildings that belong to the institution.

But there is also a legal hurdle. The law of 1905 regulates the use of the economic resources of the Church. According to this rule, donations from the faithful can only be used for the expenses and maintenance of worship. A bishop cannot, for example, transfer the money of these donations to another destination. That is, they cannot be part of a compensatory remedy.

Others even ask: Can the Church sell real estate? The debate is such that the curia should have explained this point. The secretary general of the French Episcopal Conference in charge of financial affairs, Ambroise Laurent, explained that “this is not a real estate complex of gigantic size”. For the ecclesiastical leader, it is even “an essentially religious heritage”, much of which is of lesser value.

The subject will be on the agenda of its plenary assembly, in Lourdes, in November. The French Episcopal Conference hopes to find a way to compensate the victims.

Charges also demand a speed of response. “Some things can be started quickly,” he says. Dominique Blanchet, bishop of Créteil and vice-president of the Episcopal Conference, together Luc Crepy, bishop of Versailles and president of the council for the prevention and fight against pedophilia. Both cite the forthcoming establishment of a national criminal court to try, according to canon law, the perpetrators of abuses.

On the contrary, and with great pain, the dad Francisco who spoke out against the charges. Wednesday morning, he expressed at a general audience his “shame” at the inability of the Church to deal with the victims.

The Sovereign Pontiff called on French Catholics to ensure that the church becomes a “safe home for all”. The Vatican press service said Tuesday that the head of the Catholic Church had learned of the “terrible reality” with “immense pain”. .

The document had been sent to him on Tuesday. The bishop of Moulins-Beaufort had communicated the main data to the pontiff on Friday, during a hearing. You will meet him again in December.

Even like that, the revelations could lead to profound changes within the Catholic Church, as requested by several deputies, deeming them “necessary” . Thus, La Ciase recommends “to consider conducting training in the prevention of sexual violence co-organized with associations of victims and involving health professionals”.

For many, the repair task is “abysmal”. They even ask for a “Vatican III” council . An extremely bizarre decision since the last council dating back to the 1960s. By bringing together 2,400 bishops from 136 countries, it clearly closed the celebration of Mass in Latin, with its back turned to the faithful. Jean-Pascal Gay, historian of Catholicism from the Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium), was skeptical to the European press about the celebration of a new meeting of bishops from all over the world.

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