The dismissal procedures launched against French religious Joannes Rivoire, 93, accused of sexual assault on young Inuit in Canada in the 1960s, have failed, the congregation of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate (OMI) announced on Tuesday. ).
“We have exhausted all canonical resources at our disposal to force him to appear before the court in order to restore truth and transparency and to do justice to his accusers,” explained in a press release the congregation, founded in 1816 and counting 3700 members worldwide.
The steps to exclude the religious, initiated following a visit by Inuit to the congregation’s headquarters in Lyon in 2022, all failed, her lawyer having cited the “declining health of her client”, she said. added.
Father Rivoire, who until recently lived in a retirement home in Lyon, therefore still officially belongs to this congregation of missionaries and remains housed in an Oblate community in France.
“Deeply disappointed” by this failure, the members of the OMI congregation indicate “to present (their) apologies to any victim” of a member of the clergy and specify that an “independent investigation into the allegations of sexual abuse made against Joannes Rivoire » remains ongoing in Canada.
Sent on a mission to the Canadian Far North in 1960 and returned to France after 33 years of mission, Father Rivoire, who has dual nationality, has always contested the accusations against him.
Canadian justice issued a first arrest warrant against him in 1998 for sexual assault against three minors, and a second in 2022 after the filing of a new complaint. But France refused to hand him over to Ottawa, on the grounds that it does not extradite its nationals.