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Bishop Blanchet, who attended the papal hearing on Monday, announced on December 10 that he would sell his residence in order to raise funds for compensation for victims of abuse.
VATICAN CITY – Pope Francis told French Catholic bishops on Monday that he was prepared to meet with the authors of a landmark report on the abuses.
The pope said he was “fully available” for a meeting, Bishop Eric de Moulins-Beaufort told reporters on December 13 after a papal audience.
The president of the French Episcopal Conference met the Pope at the Vatican with the vice-presidents of the conference, Mgr Olivier Leborgne d’Arras and Mgr Dominique Blanchet de Créteil, as well as the secretary general, Father Hugues de Woillemont.
The Pope and the bishops discussed the conclusions of the final report published by the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (CIASE) on October 5.
The nearly 2,500-page report says the number of children who were abused by priests, deacons, monks or nuns from 1950 to 2020 was estimated to be around 216,000.
He added that when abuse by other Church employees was also taken into account, “the estimated number of child victims rises to 330,000 for the entire period.”
“The Pope told us […] that he wished above all to hear us and showed himself completely available on the principle of receiving the members of the CIASE. It remains now to find the right date â€, declared Mgr Moulins-Beaufort, according to AFP.
According to French media, Pope Francis was due to meet with CIASE members on December 9, but the meeting was would have postponed.
The Pope responded to the CIASE report the day after its publication, describing it as “a moment of shame”.
Speaking at his weekly general audience on October 6, he noted: “To the victims, I wish to express my sadness and my pain for the traumas they have endured and my shame, our shame, my shame that for so long the Church has been unable to put this at the center of its concerns, assuring them from my prayers.
During a flight press conference on December 6, the Pope declared that he had not read the report, but that he would meet French bishops shortly and ask them “to explain to me what is wrong”.
He also cautioned against “mixing periods of time†when judging the Church’s response to abuse.
“When we conduct these studies, we have to be careful in the interpretations we make over long periods of time,” he commented.
“When you do it for such a long time, there is a risk of confusing how you perceive the problem from a period of 70 years ago.”
“I just want to say this as a principle: a historical situation must be interpreted with the hermeneutics of the time, not ours.”
Members of a French Catholic academy have strongly criticized the methodology of the CIASE report.
Eight representatives of the prestigious 250 members Catholic Academy of France wrote a 15-page document claiming that CIASE had “disturbedly†deviated from its mandate and casting doubt on its headlines.
The intervention prompted resignations from the group. Among those who would have resigned were Bishop Éric de Moulins-Beaufort, President of the Conference of Bishops of France, and Sister Véronique Margron, President of the Conference of Religious of France (CORREF), both of whom participated in the CIASE report. launch.
Jean-Marc Sauvé, President of CIASE, responded to the criticism by defending the work of his team.
AFP reported that the Pope did not address the criticism, which was allegedly sent to the Vatican, during his meeting with the French bishops, which lasted more than an hour.
Bishop Moulins-Beaufort said that Pope Francis had also discussed the resignation of Archbishop Michel Aupetit as Archbishop of Paris, which the Pope accepted December 2.
The Pope told reporters during his in-flight press conference that he had accepted Bishop Aupetit’s resignation because the Archbishop had “Lost his reputation so publiclyâ€.
“He simply told us how sad he was about the situation and the decision he had to take,” said Bishop Moulins-Beaufort, according to the Catholic weekly. Christian family.
“He repeated what he had said on the plane, namely that he had made this decision on the altar of hypocrisy and not on the truth because he felt that the climate which had been created did not allow it is not for Mgr Aupetit to govern the diocese serenely.
Mgr Moulins-Beaufort, Archbishop of Reims, in north-eastern France, declared that the Pope underlined “his esteem for the pastoral activity” of Mgr Aupetit, who celebrated a farewell mass in Paris on December 10.
Bishop Blanchet, who attended the papal audience on Monday, announcement on December 10 that he would sell his residence to raise money for compensation for victims of abuse.
“A more modest dwelling near the episcopal residence will be sought,” writes Bishop Blanchet, whose diocese of Créteil is based in the south-eastern suburbs of Paris.
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