Toulouse archbishop reverses abuser’s appointment after opposition

The French bishops’ conference leadership had voiced concern at the appointment of Fr Dominique Spina as diocesan chancellor in a statement on 10 August.

The Archbishop of Toulouse reversed his appointment of a convicted abuser to a senior diocesan post after the French bishops’ conference objected to it.

In a statement on 16 August, Archbishop Guy de Kerimel said he had reconsidered the appointment of Fr Dominique Spina as chancellor of the diocese and episcopal delegate for marriage to avoid causing “division between bishops”.

The diocese announced the same day that Spina had resigned from the post.

Archbishop Kerimel apologised to victims of sexual abuse, saying the appointment had been “interpreted by a number of people as a snub” to them which was “obviously not my intention”. But he maintained it offered “a sign of hope” to abusers who had been punished for their crimes.

The bishops’ conference leadership had voiced concern at the appointment in a statement on 10 August.

“Such an appointment to such an important position, canonically and symbolically, can only revive wounds, awaken suspicions and disconcert the people of God,” said Cardinal Jean-Marc Aveline of Marseilles, the new conference president, and his two vice-presidents.

Fr Dominique Spina was promoted in June, despite his 2006 conviction for raping and sexually assaulting a 16-year-old student while acting as his spiritual director in the 1990s at the Notre-Dame de Bétharram school in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques department of south-west France.

Following his appointment, Archbishop Kerimel said Fr Spina had served four years in prison for “very serious acts that took place nearly 30 years ago” and the Church had “nothing to reproach this priest” for since then.

In their statement, Cardinal Aveline and his assistants said “our Church, for several years, has courageously taken the path of truth in the painful issue of abuses committed within it … Little by little, we have learned to look at these facts first from the point of view of the people who have been victims and who suffer the consequences for the rest of their lives.”

This shift in perspective has, they said, begun “a long and demanding work of conversion, which we are determined to continue”.

Responding to public outrage at the appointment in July, Kerimel appealed for more mercy: “To refuse mercy is to confine the perpetrator of the abuse to social death – it is to reinstate a form of the death penalty.”

In his statement reversing the appointment, he continued to argue that it had been a response to the Gospel imperative for mercy and the challenge “to keep the main attention on the victims without rejecting the guilty forever”.

Citing the sins that Jesus forgave his disciples, Kerimel said this accorded with the rehabilitation of offenders and the principles of restorative justice.

“We believe that justice is not opposed to mercy, that mercy is not opposed to justice,” he said.

Toulouse archbishop faces outrage for appointing abuser to diocesan post

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