Since the first sexual abuse allegations surfaced in 1991 against the founder of Fondacio, the lay community—now marking its 50th anniversary—has yet to fully confront its past. In 2024, current leaders launched an independent review commission, which is expected to release its findings in June 2026.
A “cloak of silence.” As Fondacio prepares to mark its 50th anniversary May 30, that’s the phrase current leaders use to describe the long-standing hush surrounding the early history of their Christian lay community.
To understand the silence surrounding allegations of sexual and spiritual abuse by the movement’s founder, one must go back half a century. The story begins in 1974 in Poitiers. Jean-Michel Rousseau, a newly converted Catholic in his thirties and a Ph.D. in economics, launched what he called the “Christian Community for Formation.” He had returned from the United States a few years earlier, deeply changed by his encounter with the…
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