The Vatican said on Friday it had decided to open a preliminary investigation into the sexual abuse of a prominent French cardinal after he admitted he behaved “reprehensiblely” with a 14-year-old girl 35 years ago.
Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said the search is on for a chief investigator “autonomy, impartiality and necessary experience”🇧🇷
Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, Archbishop Emeritus of Bordeaux and former president of the French Episcopal Conference, revealed the sexual abuse in a letter last week when French bishops gathered for their annual meeting in Lourdes.
The revelation sparked a new crisis in the French Catholic Church, which was already grappling with revelations of decades of sexual abuse and cover-ups, as detailed in an unprecedented report released last year.
The Public Prosecution Service in Marseille announced this week that it would open an investigation into Ricard, but that “no complaints” have yet been filed against the cardinal.
The Vatican’s decision to go ahead and launch its own investigation suggests the seriousness with which the matter is being taken in Rome, given that Ricard occupies a very high position in the hierarchy: he is a voting member of the Dicastery of the Curia for the Doctrine of the Faith Romana, which means he has been implicated for years in rulings on other cases of clergy sexual abuse.
It is not yet known whether Ricard will be suspended or removed from the bodies he is part of at the Vatican. In his letter, the emeritus cardinal stated that he had placed himself in the hands of the church and civil authorities.
France’s Sauve Report estimated that 330,000 children in France have been sexually abused by some 3,000 priests and other church members over the past 70 years and that these crimes have been “systematically covered up” by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church.
Source: DN
