French prime minister embroiled in Catholic school abuse scandal

Notre Dame de Bétharram, near François Bayrou’s political base in Pau, is known for its high academic standards and strict discipline.

Prime Minister François Bayrou, head of France’s fragile government, found himself caught up in the Church’s sexual abuse scandal by accusations that he ignored flagrant cases at a Catholic boarding school while he was education minister in the 1990s.

Bayrou claimed ignorance of abuse incidents at the Notre Dame de Bétharram boarding school, near Lourdes in southwest France, basing his defence on a report from the time that concluded that pupils had not been “brutalised”.

The centrist politician, a practising Catholic protective of his region, was also head of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques region when the first complaints were made in 1996. He had some of his six children educated there at the time and his wife taught catechism at the school.

“A total of 112 people call themselves victims and 72 have formally filed complaints. Nearly half of these concern sexual assault or rape,” the lay Christian weekly La Vie said. A preliminary justice inquiry and a parliamentary inquiry have been launched.

Bayrou, accused by victims’ groups of lying, survived a heated debate and no-confidence vote in parliament on 19 February. But the abuse cases, dating from the 1950s to 2010, have weakened him and the government which has limped along since President Emmanuel Macron lost a snap election to the legislature he called last year.

The scandal also prompted the bishops’ conference, confronted once again with the abuse scandal, quickly to denounce the “alarming revelations concerning facts of mistreatment and sexual violence against minors”.

A long statement from the conference said one priest and two lay teachers had been taken into police custody after new victims came forward.

“Abusive educational practices and sexual violence and assaults shame humanity. They damage all education, especially Catholic education, and must be strongly denounced, just as those who are victims must be heard, supported, protected and accompanied,” it said.

Notre Dame de Bétharram, near Bayrou’s political base in Pau, is known for its high academic standards and strict discipline. Locals have dubbed it “the school of the hard-hitting brothers”.

The secondary school is run by the Fathers of the Sacred Heart of Jesus of Bétharram, a religious congregation founded in 1832 in the town of the same name. The French branch is dwindling now but it is still active in Asia, Africa and South America.

Bayrou met members of a victims’ group in Pau on 15 February, accepting their demands and promising additional funds to research the case.

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