In 1995, he was dismissed by Rome from his position as bishop of Evreux because of his positions which displeased a conservative fringe of the episcopate.
He had defended the cause of divorcees, homosexuals, immigrants, or even the right to blasphemy. Bishop Jacques Gaillot died on Wednesday April 12 at the age of 87, announced the Conference of Bishops of France (CEF). He had been hospitalized in Paris for pancreatic cancer, according to the diocese of Evreux. “Beyond certain positions that may have divided, we remember that he above all kept the concern for the poorest and the peripheries”said the CEF.
The bishop had been relieved by the Vatican in 1995 of his functions at the head of the bishopric of Evreux because of his protest positions. Very involved in social matters, he had been criticized in the French episcopate because of his positions which went beyond the reserve required for bishops. His dismissal was seen as a sanction from the conservatives, supported by John Paul II.
An interview with the pope in 2015
After his eviction from the diocese of Evreux, he was named honorary bishop “in partibus” of Partenia, a diocese of Mauritania that disappeared in the 5th century. Jacques Gaillot then made this diocese “virtual” an instrument of defense of the excluded (undocumented, homeless, etc.). “Until recently, he continued to visit prisoners in prison”, explained for his part one of his relatives, quoted by AFP. He was co-president of the Rights in front association, which he had created in 1994 with the singer Jacques Higelin, the doctor Léon Schwartzenberg and the philosopher Albert Jacquard, and which fights against precariousness and exclusion.
In September 2015, he was received by Pope Francis for almost an hour. “The pope said to Monsignor Gaillot: ‘What you are doing for the excluded is good'”had reported France Télévisions.
Jacques Gaillot had admitted, in 2010, having welcomed into his diocese a priest guilty of pedocriminal acts. This Canadian priest, Denis Vadeboncoeur, had been authorized by the Church to practice in France despite being sentenced to 20 months in prison in Canada in 1985 for multiple acts of pedocrime. Aware of these facts, Jacques Gaillot had appointed him in 1988 parish priest and episcopal vicar, putting him in contact with children in the west of Eure. He recognized “a mistake” and explained that“at the time, the Church functioned in this way”.