Abbé Pierre affair | The Catholic Church forced to react

(Paris) Faced with the emotion aroused in France by the testimonies of sexual violence targeting Abbé Pierre, the Catholic Church is being pushed to react, to reaffirm its desire to help the victims and counter accusations of silence for years.

“I reaffirm here the work of the Church in France so that the truth is known” on sexual assaults and spiritual control, he told the newspaper on Monday The World the president of the Conference of Bishops of France, Éric de Moulins-Beaufort.

Abbé Pierre, who died in 2007, is accused by about twenty women, some of them minors at the time, of sexual violence that for some amounted to rape. Since their revelation this summer by the Egae firm, the question of the silence of institutions has been central.

“The Church has made a mistake,” said the former president of Catholic Relief Services, Véronique Fayet, on French radio RTL on Sunday.

“The informed bishops and the leaders of Emmaüs”, a movement created by Abbé Pierre, “covered up the affairs”, affirmed four researchers from the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (CIASE) in July.

A 1958 letter revealed by Franceinfo could support this theory, since the Archbishop of Paris Maurice Feltin dissuades a minister from decorating Abbé Pierre, whom he describes as “seriously ill”.

The “lost” Catholic Church

Pope Francis rekindled the questions by stating Friday, in convoluted remarks, that the Vatican had been aware, at least since his death in 2007, of the accusations of sexual violence against Abbé Pierre.

These remarks “crush all the efforts of the Church in France,” believes Anne Soupa, the president of the Comité de la Jupe, a feminist and Catholic association that takes a critical look at the institution. “The Church did not have the right attitude” and today “is lost in this affair, it does not know where to go,” she tells AFP.

Bishop de Moulins-Beaufort, who in recent weeks mentioned an acquaintance with certain bishops, was more specific on Monday: “it is now established that, from 1955-1957, at least some bishops knew that Abbé Pierre had serious behavior towards women.”

He recalled that the Church had at the time had “a strong reaction to the ways of doing things at that time”, by sending Abbé Pierre for psychiatric treatment, by appointing an assistant to him…

Following the revelations of the Egae cabinet, the Conference of Bishops of France has also decided to open its archives. The diocese of Grenoble, on which Abbé Pierre depended, has taken the same decision.

And now? In his column published after the Pope’s remarks, Mgr de Moulins Beaufort also invites the Vatican to “study its archives” and to “say what the Holy See knew and when it knew it.”

Because Francis’ statement also irritated: “the question remains whether the Holy See was aware of rumors or facts, and which ones,” underlines a source close to the case.

“Disgusted”

More broadly, the Archbishop of Reims calls on “all other institutions and organizations” to do the same, in this work of “truth” around an abbot who “has almost always lived at a distance” from the ecclesiastical framework.

Abbé Pierre, whose real name was Henri Grouès, was a member of parliament in the 1950s before becoming the “French people’s favourite personality” for several years in a row in the 1990s.

Following the testimonies published by the Egae firm, Emmaüs announced the establishment of a commission of inquiry.

The Catholic Church, which has been facing sexual violence scandals for years, has set up several reparation bodies and listening cells.

Some doubt, however, that this extraordinary affair represents a real turning point.

“We are disgusted by all the times that the hierarchy of our Church has chosen, in all conscience, to stifle the voices of the victims,” ​​they wrote in a column in the Catholic newspaper on Monday. The Cross members of Act for our Church, a collective of Catholic faithful created after the CIASE report.

“Should we now suspect of insincerity any institutional statement that assures us that their surprise and their fear are immense, that the necessary is being done, that measures are being taken?”, they ask, considering that “it is urgent to take action” and that “the task is immense”.