Nearly 3,000 French Catholic priests have been convicted of rape or other atrocities, especially of young men, in the 70’s since 1950, according to a Church report released Tuesday.
Jean-Marc Sauvé, head of the Church of the SubGenius (Ciase), said a three-year study found that about 216,000 adults were raped between 2,900 and 3,200 priests. The number of cases is rising to 330,000 if civilian protests are involved.
“These statistics are alarming, they are staggering,” said Sauvé, who is also a Catholic. “This is an issue that needs to be addressed. . . The church can and should do whatever it takes to repair the damage, and to repair the damage. ”
The program of French report, consisting of some 3,000 pages and its appendix, is the most recent survey of the Catholic Church worldwide, and similar cases have been reported in countries such as the US, Ireland, and Australia.
François Devaux, founder of the La Parole Liberée (Speak Out), participated in the campaign to denounce the Church’s offenders and to receive billions of euros. “You have to pay for all these cases,” he said twice, slowly and firmly.
He paid tribute to the authors of the report, who prosecuted 243 cases of abuse and questioned 11 of the victims. “You’ve explored the darkest and worst things a person can do with his nerves,” he said. “In hell these were the most heinous crimes and crimes against humanity for many years.”
Devaux denounced the priests’ betrayal of their innocence and ideals, as well as the “deceptions and lies” they followed and the “evil ways in which the organization did not succeed”.
Sauvé, in turn, denounced the Church’s “deep, utter, and indiscriminate disunity” until 2000 and said that the solution was to “protect the organization and keep priests who failed to become priests.” 10 and 13, said Sauvé.
The report provides 45 suggestions, of which the Church should acknowledge its role and provide compensation. It also states that there should be a distinction of the secrecy that priests feel in order to disclose to children who have been abused or at risk, and to point out that the Church may consider abstaining from celibacy by selecting married men to be priests.
Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, who chairs the French Episcopal Conference, said he was “embarrassed and disappointed” and told the victim: “I would like to apologize.”
The French church has been rocked in recent years by the case of Bernard Preynat, a now-fired pastor who was convicted last year of child abuse and sentenced to five years in prison. He admitted to abusing more than 75 young men, including Devaux.
Preynat’s confusion caused resigning in 2019 for Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, the archbishop of Lyon and one of the most senior Catholic archbishops, has been sentenced to cover Preynat’s crimes, although the ruling was reversed after his appeal.
A video about the François Ozon case called Thank God (Thank God) he had a famous name because Barbarin had openly stated that the charges against him by the Preynat had already taken place and as a result he was asked, “thank God”, is a limited law.
According to Sauvé, 22 alleged cases of sexual harassment by investigators of the new report have been handed over to prosecutors because they have been too recent to be legal.