For Valérie Fayet, the former president of Catholic Relief Services in France, the vigilance surrounding Abbé Pierre “was not sufficient nor sufficiently severe.”
Tongues continue to loosen around the accusations of sexual assault against Abbé Pierre. This Friday, September 13, Pope Francis revealed that the Vatican had been informed of the sexual violence committed by the priest “after his death” in 2007.
Speaking to RTL on Sunday, September 15, Valérie Fayet, former president of Secours Catholique in France, said that Abbé Pierre “is an icon for all French people, especially Catholics, who failed, who betrayed us.”
“There was a form of vigilance, but it was not sufficient or severe enough”
During this interview, Véronique Fayet notes the failings of the Catholic institution, believing that “the Church has made a mistake.”
“At the time, in the 1950s and 1960s, there was a form of vigilance, but it was not sufficient or severe enough,” believes the former president of Catholic Relief Services in France.
For the latter, “we cannot judge the 1950s with today’s eyes, but it is extremely painful to think that there was also a form of complicity from a part of the institution.”
But Valérie Fayet also points to the work done by the Church on the subject of sexual abuse. “We have seen in recent years, since all the work done by the independent commission under the leadership of Jean-Marc Sauvé on abuse in the Church, that there was often, in the case of predatory and abusive priests and perpetrators of sexual crimes, there was unfortunately often a form of complicity from the institution,” she points out.
In the fall of 2021, the CIASE (Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church) published a report of more than 2,000 pages on sexual abuse in the French Catholic Church since the 1950s.
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