A retired French bishop known for his encouragement of Church movements and advocacy of inter-religious dialogue resigned because of past sexual abuse cases rather than just ill health, it has been revealed.
Bishop Michel Santier of Créteil, a diocese in the eastern Paris suburbs, was quietly disciplined by the Vatican when it accepted his early retirement at 73 in 2020, ostensibly on health grounds.
The weekly Famille Chrétienne has revealed he was also removed for “using his influence over two young adult men for sexual purposes” in the 1990s and abusing the sacrament of confession. The Vatican ordered him to live “a life of prayer and penance” in an abbey in Normandy.
These latest sexual abuse report shocked the Church in France, already suffering from repeated previous cases.
“We’re asked to witness to the Gospel … but the witness of our bishops doesn’t match their mission,” a tearful catechism teacher in Créteil told the daily La Croix.
Bishop Santier admitted his misdeeds privately in 2019. When this was reported to the Vatican later that year, he sent Pope Francis his letter of resignation and mentioned the abuse “which he admits”, reported Famille Chrétienne, quoting his successor, Bishop Dominique Blanche.
When Pope Francis accepted his early resignation in June 2020, Bishop Santier publicly cited his recent hospitalisation for Covid-19 and asthma from Paris’s polluted air as his reasons.
He said the papal nuncio Archbishop Celestino Migliore “received him warmly” when informing him of the Pope’s decision. In both cases, no public mention was made of the abuse cases.
Confirming the Famille Chretienne report, Bishop Blanchet said the Church stood for truth and justice and “there cannot be any exception … no matter what function is concerned.”
Bishop Santier was known and appreciated in the diocese he headed from 2007 until his departure in January 2021. Before that he was bishop in Luçon in western France, a seminary professor and a priest in Normandy. He studied at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome.
He enjoyed a reputation as a compassionate pastor who stood up for new communities, interfaith dialogue and groups sidelined by the Church such as homosexuals and divorced Catholics.
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