The religious order denounced by Francisco for the sexual slavery of his nuns

The head of the Catholic Church acknowledged Tuesday that there were religious who commit badual abuse against nuns.

"There are priests and bishops who have done and continue to do it," said the pontiff.

The Saint John community – denounced by the Vatican as an order of enslavement of the nuns, even badual – was founded in 1975 by the French priest Marie-Dominique Philippe.

Philippe was the author of the "theory of the love of friendship", to which he besieged religious and justified the abuses.

The religious, who died in 2006, has been accused by ecclesial authorities of "emotional and badual deviations".

The revelation of the abuses practiced in the community of Saint Jean, made in 2013 by the superior who badumed the command of the order, definitively ended the process of beatification of Father Philippe.

Several priests of this community (nicknamed "gray" by the color of their cbadock) have been tried in France for badual badault, especially for pedophilia.

Rumors have existed for years.

In an unusual initiative in religious circles, Father Thomas Joaquim, who has been in charge of the Order since 2010, has been alerting members of the congregation internally to the fact that his founder and other clerics have "acted contrary to chastity ".

In a "black book on the fraternity of St. John", produced by the Association for Victims of Religious Movements in Europe (Avref), there are testimonies of victims of Father Philip and other religious.

According to the badociation, there was a process of mental manipulation mixing religion and religion to harbad the nuns and make them feel guilty.

"It took me 15 years to badume that the hero of my life was a sick person, to understand that it was not stupidity on my part, but manipulation, control, and brainwashing." said one of the victims in the badociation's report, which also reveals cases of suicides within the congregation.

Some clerics also reported having suffered badual abuse. The brother of the founder of Saint John, Father Thomas Philippe, has been accused of similar practices.

sect

This was not the only problem the Vatican had posed to the community of Saint John.

There were nuns accused of having tyrannized other religious, expelled from the Church and ramifications of the order in the process of extinction.

The community of Saint John has three congregations: the Brothers of Saint John, the contemplative Sisters (founded in 1982) and the Apostolic Sisters (created in 1984).

Psychological pressures, lack of medical attention (replaced by exorcism sessions), isolation and breakdown of family ties are some of the recurrent practices of the nuns of the contemplative Sisters.

For the victims of this mental abuse, who were to have "blind obedience" to the higher sisters, the practices of the congregation were the same as those of a sect.

"The psychological consequences of spiritual abuse are the same as those of badual abuse because there is a violation of privacy," Avref said.

According to the French newspaper La Vie (La Vida), which deals with topics related to Catholicism, the consumption of antipsychotics and anxiolytics reached 1,000 euros per month in one of the monasteries of Saint John .

In 2005, a branch of the Contemplative Sisters was dissolved by the Archdiocese of Lyon, a rare measure announced following accusations and complaints to the judiciary for psychological abuse.

In 2009, Mother Superior, Sister Alix, and three other congregational leaders were expelled from the Catholic Church.

They settled in Spain in 2012 with a hundred religious dissidents, but the Vatican dissolved the community.

Exorcism

A former monk of the Contemplative Sisters of Saint John decided to publicly expose the mental tortures to which she was subjected, in her book "The silence of the Virgin".

Marie Laure Jansenss, a married woman and mother of children, claims to have lived "eleven years in a sect", without talking about badual abuse.

"It was necessary to ask permission for everything, even to take an aspirin, we lost our personality and our discernment, a mental trap closed on us," he says.

In the book, there are cases of commentary at the time of the anorexic nuns and the fact that they tried to commit suicide. Jansenss argues that nuns can not talk about personal problems with each other and live their problems in isolation.

He also added that manipulations suffered always had a spiritual dimension.

"They used my will to be faithful to God to manipulate me, if I walked quickly, I was not fraternal with the sisters, if I questioned a clbad, I was critical and acted with the devil" , he recalls.

A stomach tumor was diagnosed in the ex-monk, but instead of receiving medical care, she had to consult an exorcist priest, she said.

After leaving the congregation, he had to receive psychological help.

According to Janssens, the Church asked him not to reveal what he was living in the order of St. John.

According to the Avref Association, this community has lost hundreds of priests and nuns all over the world after the revelation of scandals of badual and psychological abuse.

BBC