France's bishops have agreed to pay a financial contribution to victims of clerical sexual abuse, step up efforts against pedophilia and establish a day of prayer for those whose suffering they overlooked in the past.
Their plenary assembly unveiled its 11 resolutions on 26 March, the same day that La Parole Liberée (The Liberated Word), France’s main victims protection group, announced it had reached its goal of exposing the scandal and would shut down.
The bishops’ “Letter to Catholics” issued with the resolutions amounted to a solemn recognition of their failures in the scandal and solid decisions to fight it. But it still left some questions such as how exactly to deal with an independent commission’s report on abuse due in October.
“Let us express our desolation at the crimes committed and suffered and our deep humiliation that members of the Body of Christ paid so little attention and were sometimes so unready to hear and accompany (the victims),” it said. “We renew our request for forgiveness.”
The financial contribution would be a lump sum that could be completed after the commission investigating abuse in the Church since 1950 produces its final report, the bishops said without elaborating.
This sum, which bishops conference head Archbishop Éric de Moulins-Beaufort said is not compensation or reparation, would be paid from a special five million euro fund to be raised among bishops, priests and laity.
It could prove difficult to attract funds from dioceses grappling with pandemic-induced budget cuts and lay Catholics unwilling to pay for the clergy’s failures.
The letter was blunt on this last point: “Priests have abused their sacramental position to exercise control over young people and sometimes to make them suffer sexual violence.”
It said ruining a child's life was worse than ruining the reputation of an individual or a Church.
Among the resolutions were decisions to create a “site of memory” for the victims, probably at Lourdes, and an annual day of prayer for them.
The bishops would also appoint staff trained in protecting minors to all Church activities dealing with youths as contact persons independent of the local hierarchy to respond to their complaints.
Announcing the dissolution of La Parole Liberée, which exposed the abuse scandal that forced Cardinal Philippe Barbarin to quit as archbishop, its head François Devaux said the establishment of the independent commission was its biggest victory.
“It’s clear that things have evolved considerably and more and more people are speaking out freely,” he said. But he was disappointed that the bishops ignored calls to wait for the commission’s report.
“We are on the verge of having a very specific report by people who are extremely competent, multidisciplinary, who will have thought this through very thoroughly,” he told French radio. “Not to wait for it lacks a little humility.”
Commission head Jean-Marc Sauvé has estimated the report could find up to 10,000 cases of clerical sexual abuse, which victims say will be “a tsunami”.
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