Four weeks after the submission of the report of the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (Ciase) which revealed the extent of child crime in the Church of France, the bishops hold their plenary assembly from Tuesday 2 November in Lourdes. According to the program given to the press, the 120 or so prelates gathered for seven days will devote almost half of their work on “the fight against violence and sexual assault on minors”. The gathering, initially planned to last six days, is preceded by an opening day which focuses entirely on the theme. Jean-Marc Sauvé, president of the Commission on pedocriminality, was not invited.
According to an Ifop poll for the newspaper La Croix published on Thursday, the reaction of the episcopate is eagerly awaited by Catholics: for 76% of them, it has not been up to date.
“Violence and sexual assault on minors” at the heart of the work
The bishops wish “give time to reception, work, reading“from the report published on October 5, AFP added. After two and a half years of work, the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (Ciase) revealed that since 1950, some 216,000 more people 18-year-olds were subjected to violence or sexual assault when they were minors, by clerics (priests or deacons) or religious men and women.
The “silences” and the “failures“of the Catholic Church in the face of acts of pedocriminality present a “systemic character”, considered the Commission, which indicated that it “at length deliberated” and be “came to a unanimous conclusion: the Church did not know how to see, did not know how to hear, did not know how to pick up weak signals“.
Victims invited to speak out
Victims will be invited to speak in plenary on Friday, with members of the Corref (Conference of Religious and Religious of France) lay people and clerics who participated in working groups, members of listening cells and officials of Catholic education.
Saturday morning a “memorial gesture”, symbolic is planned in the direction of the victims.
At the same time, a gathering of lay people, collectives of victims will be organized at 2 p.m. in Lourdes and Paris in front of the headquarters of the Bishops’ Conference, with a purple ribbon symbolizing the call for recognition of the responsibility of the Church, reparation and a reform program. If a few victims were invited to Lourdes, none of the collectives and associations will make the trip, regretting that the Sauvé report is not the sole subject of the assembly.
“Imperative” that the bishops pronounce the “recognition of the responsibility of the Church and initiate a process of reparation “
“We don’t want not be the guarantor of a minimum process. What is expected is a pure and simple application of the recommendations of the Sauvé commission (…) This theme should only be the focus of this plenary assembly. It’s a week to communicate, to show that the Cef wants to do but does not give itself the means “, particularly lamented to AFP Olivier Savignac, the collective Parler et revivre.
For François Devaux, co-founder of the association La parole libérée, he is “imperative“that the bishops pronounce on November 7 the”recognition of the responsibility of the Church and initiate a process of reparation “.
The question of compensation
The questions of “responsibility” but also financial device allowing to pay, in the future, a contribution to the victims, will be studied during this week, and even among “the priorities” of this meeting, according to the episcopate.
After a week of work, several subjects – the content of which is still unknown – will be put to the vote of the bishops at the closing on November 8. Among its 45 recommendations, the Sauvé commission proposed to recognize the civil and social responsibility of the Church “regardless of any personal fault of its managers “.
She also advocated d” individualize the calculation of compensation due to each victim according to the “harm suffered”. To finance the compensation fund, it rejects the track of an appeal for donations from the faithful, advocating to finance the compensation paid to the victims “from the heritage of the aggressors and the Church of France”. This last recommendation contradicts the intentions of the CEF. In March, the episcopate announced the payment to victims, from 2022, of a “financial contribution “, but which, according to her, is not compensation. She further announced a “dotation funds” which can be supplemented by “the gifts of bishops, priests, the faithful and anyone who wants to participate”. The statutes of this fund were “deposited” last summer, assure the bishops who began to contribute.