Archbishop Luis Ladaria Ferrer advised Cardinal Philippe Barbarin in February 2015 to “avoid public scandal” in dealing with a priest whose sexual abuse of dozens of French boys forced Barbarin to resign as Lyon archbishop in 2020.
According to the Rome daily Domani, his letter to Barbarin on 3 February simply told him to “take appropriate disciplinary measures” to keep Preynat away from minors and to take care of victims.
The date is important because the scandal, which eventually shook the French Church and led to a devastating report of widespread clerical sexual abuse last October, was hardly known publicly at the time.
The first victim’s complaint to the police came in mid-2015 and an influential support group was founded that December. Barbarin, who had known privately about Preynat’s abuse for about a decade, removed him from ministry that summer.
The cardinal always denied any cover-up, but he eventually admitted his response to the scandal was “inadequate”. A French court convicted him in 2019 of failing to report a crime, but this was overturned on appeal the following year.
Ladaria was secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith when he wrote the letter, which Domani printed on 11 February. Victims mentioned his advice in their case against Barbarin, but the text of the letter was not known.
In 2018, after he had been made a cardinal and CDF prefect, a Lyon court named Ladaria as a co-defendant in Barbarin’s first cover-up trial, along with two other French bishops and a priest.
The trial was delayed twice because the Vatican refused to acknowledge receipt of the summons. It first said the documents should be translated into Spanish and Italian, and later invoked diplomatic immunity because of the Holy See’s sovereign status.
The trial finally went ahead without Ladaria. Barbarin suspended his own duties as Lyon archbishop in 2019 after his initial conviction and resigned after winning his appeal in 2020.
Under persistent campaigning by the victims’ support group La Parole Libérée, the Preynat scandal led to the award-winning film By The Grace of God in 2019. The priest was removed from the clerical state and sentenced by a French court in 2020 to five years in prison.
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