Citing exhaustion from a demanding job, two French bishops have voluntarily been demoted to auxiliary bishop status in the latest sign of serious strains in the country’s episcopacy.
Bishop Thierry Brac de la Perrière, 64, will move “to a less onerous and less exposed ministry” in his east-central home archdiocese of Lyon from Nevers in the nearby Burgundy region, where he was bishop since 2011.
He had already served as Lyon auxiliary bishop from 2003 to 2011.
Bishop Jean-Pierre Batut of Blois in the Loire Valley will join Toulouse archdiocese in southwest France, which previously had no auxiliary. The 68-year-old had been a Lyon auxiliary bishop from 2009 to 2015.
Moving down the career path is unusual, but both shepherds warned their flocks of their failing energy.
Batut told RCF radio bishops must “have the simplicity, the realism, and perhaps also the humility to say to oneself — here, when the burden becomes too great, one can hand over one’s responsibility.”
He said the Church needed a “greater flexibility in the way bishops can renounce their office in order to continue to serve, but in a different way.”
The French Church has confronted increasing reports of bishops who have failed and seen priests refuse to be promoted to the episcopacy.
After the critical Sauvé report of 2021, the head of the episcopal conference had to admit in 2022 that 11 current or former French bishops had been investigated by civil or canonical justice on allegations of committing or covering up sexual abuse.
About 10 per cent of French bishops have left office for different reasons in recent years. They included the former archbishops of Paris and Strasbourg, Michel Aupetit and Luc Ravel, who both left after complaints about their management styles.
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