Harassment of priests on nuns, boom of complaints. Religiosa recounts: "Me, abused in confessional"

The lid rises more and more on what someone called the "last taboo" of the Church, that of religious victims of badual abuse and violence by priests or other religious. And if there is a sensation in recent days about the revelation of a prominent American cardinal, former Archbishop of Washington Theodore McCarrick, who resigned from the Cardinal on charges of badual abuse and deportation. harbadment of minor and adult seminarians, the Vatican documented thorough investigation by the Associated Press – was aware of badual abuse of nuns by priests and bishops, and did little to stop it.

Cases of abused nuns have emerged in Europe, Africa, South America and Asia, showing that the problem is global and pervasive, thanks to the second-clbad status in the Church and to their submission to the men who control it. Yet, some sisters are making their voices heard, supported by the #MeToo movement and growing recognition that even adults can be badually abused when there is an imbalance of power in a relationship. The nuns are beginning to publicly denounce years of inaction on the part of church leaders, even after major studies on the problem in Africa were reported to the Vatican in the 1990s. " He has opened a big injury, "said a sister at the AP. "I claimed that it had not happened."

Wearing the religious habit and holding the rosary in her hand, the woman broke almost two decades of silence to relate to the AP of the moment, in 2000, when the priest confessed that his sins took advantage of it by force, in the midst of the sacrament. The aggression – and the subsequent approach of another priest a year later – led him to stop confessing with a priest other than his spiritual father, who lives in another country. The extent of the abuse of the nuns is not clear, at least outside the Vatican. However, this week, about half a dozen sisters from a small religious congregation in Chile have come out on national television with their stories of abuse by priests and other nuns and how their superiors have done nothing to stop all this.

A nun in India recently made a formal complaint to the police accusing a bishop of rape, which would have been unthinkable just a year ago. Cases in Africa have emerged periodically; in 2013, for example, a well-known priest in Uganda wrote to his superiors a message that referred to "romantic priests involved with religious sisters", for which he was promptly suspended by the Church until the end of the year. to what he apologizes for, in May. For the moment, the Vatican remains silent on the measures taken to badess the magnitude of the problem at the global level, or to punish the guilty and take care of the victims, explaining that "it is up to the leaders of the local church to punish priests who badually abuse ".

Last June, France had already been "Le Parisien" to evoke a "huge potential scandal", summarizing some cases like that of "a religious violated by another religious in a monastery", a " nun victim of trial and error of a priest in the confessional "and another" badually badaulted by another nun of his own congregation ". Usually very old, then dropped as a prescription. In the great majority of cases, the prey keeps the mouth stitched. And when they manage to tell their story, it's because they came out of the clergy, "the newspaper continues. But the phenomenon is considered "much broader", said François Devaux of the badociation La Parole Liberee, pointing out those "priests who abuse their position of spiritual authority to enjoy badually" . And today the veil begins to fall.