“We must try to understand how [l’abbé Pierre] was able to escape the vigilance of so many people”, estimated this Wednesday Éric de Moulins-Beaufort, archbishop of Reims and president of the conference of bishops of France. The Catholic Church has asked the courts to open an investigation.
While new extremely serious accusations have been revealed against Abbé Pierre, Eric de Moulins-Beaufortarchbishop of Reims and president of the conference of bishops of France, returned this Wednesday to the desire of the Catholic Church to take legal action. Guest of “ici Champagne-Ardenne”, the archbishop wishes to study the possibility of opening an investigation into the actions of Abbé Pierre, long an iconic figure in the defense of the deprived but who is the subject of numerous accusations of rape and sexual assault.
“I’m not specifically looking for culprits“, but “we must try to understand how [l’abbé Pierre] was able to escape the vigilance of so many people”, underlines the president of the Conference of Bishops of France. According to him, “there are things which deserve a serious investigation to be carried out. We, the Church of France, from the month of September, we opened the archives and the archives show that from 1957 in 1970, we tried to follow Abbé Pierre and limit his action“, he continues. After the 1970s, “we don’t know anything anymore. So we must try to understand why suddenly everything stopped and how he was able to escape the vigilance of so many people he met.“.
“We must get to the bottom of what the victims’ words represent”
“What is new is that for several months, people have been speaking, we must follow through on what their words represent“, he believes. Monsignor Eric de Moulins-Beaufort recognizes that there is “truly terrible acts, very repeated, very numerous, sometimes apparently organized. We must try to understand what happened and how this blindness was possible.“Emmaüs has brought together a historical commission,”which is very good, but its commission has no particular power of investigation“, regrets the president of the Conference of Bishops of France.
He assures that he “do not specifically look for culprits, it is not that within the Emmaus movement, there have been biographies“, but he wants to understand”how he was able to organize what documentaries “broadcast last week“, as Special Envoy on France 2, mentioned, like this apartment”in which he received people. We heard the testimony of a woman who was invited, but urgently, to come every morning to meet him“, relates Eric de Moulins-Beaufort. “If we want to get out of this sexual violence that we are now seeing in the Church but in many sectors and in this case, in a social sector, we must take the means to understand it“, he thinks.
The words “founder Abbé Pierre” will disappear from the Emmaüs France logo. The movement took action on Tuesday in an extraordinary general assembly, six months after the first revelations of accusations of sexual assault and rape targeting the former priest. 33 testimonies have so far been verified.
-Canada
