Pope Francis and the French state agreed to name Bishop Pascal Delannoy of Saint Denis the next Archbishop of Strasbourg.
The Alsatian archdiocese has been in turmoil since Archbishop Luc Ravel quit in April 2023 amid mounting criticism of his isolated and authoritarian leadership.
Because the border region belonged to Germany when France separated Church and State in 1905, Alsace and Moselle are still subject to the 1801 Concordat with the Vatican. That means laïcité laws do not apply there and the French state must validate bishops’ appointments.
Weeks after Ravel resigned, his auxiliary Bishop Gilles Reithinger was accused of having concealed sexual assaults by subordinates and having illicit relations with men himself.
Reithinger, a former superior of the Foreign Missions of Paris (MEP), firmly denied the abuse allegations. He resigned last month citing “health problems” – a claim which was reportedly accurate but which also belied the scandal surrounding him and the MEP.
Ravel’s predecessor, Archbishop Jean-Pierre Grallet, admitted in 2022 to having made “inappropriate gestures” to an adult woman in the 1980s in a case judged too far in the past to be pursued.
By contrast, Delannoy, 66, has the reputation of being modest and accessible, with two decades of experience as a bishop in the northern Paris suburb of Saint Denis.
Having trained and worked as an accountant for a few years before entering the seminary, he has also held financial posts in the bishops’ conference.
“If he didn't have a pectoral cross, we wouldn't even know he was the bishop. He listens seriously to people, his homilies are concrete, we see that he worked before opting for the priesthood,” said a Jesuit familiar with Delannoy.
“In the working-class areas of Roubaix, you can’t overlook his solidarity with the most deprived or ignore [his] interreligious dialogue,” another colleague, Bishop Jean-Luc Brunin of Le Havre, told La Croix.
Delannoy’s previous diocese – which covers one of the country’s poorest departments, Seine-Saint Denis – is one of the most multicultural and multireligious in France.
It was named after the first bishop of Paris, a third-century martyr said to have carried his severed head from the capital until he collapsed at the site of the diocese’s cathedral. A statue of the saint, his head in his hands, adorns the facade of Notre Dame de Paris.
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