The Vatican said on Friday it had decided to launch a preliminary investigation into the sexual abuse of a prominent French cardinal after he admitted to behaving “reprehensibly” with a 14-year-old girl 35 years ago.
According to Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni, the search for a lead investigator with the “necessary autonomy, impartiality and experience” is underway.
Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, archbishop emeritus of Bordeaux and former president of the French Bishops’ Conference, revealed the sexual abuse in a letter last week as French bishops gathered for their annual assembly in Lourdes.
The disclosure triggered another crisis in the French Catholic Church, which was already grappling with revelations of decades of sexual abuse and cover-ups detailed in an unprecedented report published last year.
The Marseille prosecutor’s office announced this week that it would open an investigation into Ricard, but that “no complaint” had yet been filed against the cardinal.
The Vatican’s decision to go ahead and launch its own investigation suggests how seriously the matter is being taken in Rome, given that Ricard ranks very high in the hierarchy: he is a voting member of the Curia’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith Romana, which means it has been involved in rulings on other clergy sexual abuse cases for years.
It is not yet known if Ricard will be suspended or removed from the bodies of which he is a part in the Vatican. In his letter, the cardinal emeritus declares that he places himself in the hands of the Church and the civil authorities.
The French Sauve report estimated that 330,000 children in France have been sexually abused in the past 70 years by some 3,000 priests and other members of the Church and that these crimes have been “systematically covered up” by the Catholic Church hierarchy.
Source: TSF
