How the Church in France Is Tackling Sexual Abuse

La Croix
January 25, 2017

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Over the past year the Catholic Church in France has stepped up its efforts to tackle cases of sexual abuse of minors by priests. Here, La Croix International looks at two examples of such crimes and their aftermath.

The wheels of justice turn in Le Mans

An alleged case of paedophilia is under investigation in the diocese of Le Mans, in the northwest of France. Fr Max de Guilbert, who has always denied any wrongdoing, was detained on remand in June 2015 accused of the crime of rape and sexual assault by a person in authority of a minor under the age of 15.

The crimes were alleged to have been committed between 1993 and 2007 on young boys when de Guilbert was stationed in the parishes of Mamers (from 1993 to 1995) and Bonnetable (from 1995 to 2007) in the north of the department of Sarthe. After a year of pre-trial detention, the priest was placed under house arrest and sent to an abbey in Brittany before being placed under judicial supervision.

The complainants are now thought to number around a dozen. In 1995, a family filed a complaint about improper touching, but the case was discontinued for lack of sufficient evidence. The priest was transferred; his bishop, Jacques Faivre (who died in 2010) took no particular action.

De Guibert's file was sent to Rome, and an expert opinion by Fr Tony Anatrella (which is currently the subject of a canonical review) concluded that the priest was "an immature but non-paedophile personality".

After consultations, Bishop Yves Le Saux decided in 2009 to transfer de Guilbert as a chaplain to Le Mans hospital, where he would not have contact with children. In 2014, after four years under supervision, the bishop appointed him as a parish priest, maintaining a ban on his being alone with children. In spite of this, he had close contact with many families and was described by an observer as "charismatic, but doing whatever he wanted and having trouble with the structure". He continued to organize scout camps as well as camps for disabled and able-bodied children.

The case, which created discomfort in the diocese, illustrates the difficulty a bishop finds himself in when a priest, supported by his family and by parishioners, insists on his innocence. As soon as de Guibert was arrested in June 2015, the bishop relieved him of all public ministry and pastoral activity and set up a “listening facility” in his parish.

Today, Le Saux says he prefers to stick to "a form of prudence and reserve until the judicial process sheds light on this very complex affair".

"I want to say emphatically that in view of the complexity of this situation, it is important that the whole truth be exposed, because in my opinion the only people that matter are those who might be victims,” he wrote in a 2015 statement.

Interviewed in March 2016, the bishop said he had given judicial authorities all the elements in his possession. "As for the past, what my predecessors may have known or not known, I do not know."

The past re-examined in Toulouse

What should be done with priests who have been convicted? The question came to the fore last year in the diocese of Toulouse. Convicted in 2006 for the 1993 rape of a 16-year-old committed while he was serving in the diocese of Bayonne, Fr Dominique Spina was in 2009, after he had served his sentence, appointed to head a parish by the archbishop of Toulouse, Robert Le Gall. 

The parishioners were informed of their parish priest’s past, and, with some exceptions, expressed no objections. Yet, in May 2016, after the case gained media exposure, Le Gall decided to relieve the priest of his pastoral duties. Explaining why he had appointed Spina to the parish in the first place, the bishop said that the courts had not prohibited the priest having direct contact with children, “and he wanted to take up a ministry again".

Since then, after the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith decided not to defrock him, the priest has both administrative and pastoral duties, in a role where he has no contact with young people.

For Fr Herve Gaignard, vicar general of Toulouse, these last months have been an opportunity to reflect on what to do with priests who have been found guilty of abuse, to "re-examine the past of the diocese" and to recognize that not everything had been handled in the best way.

"We realized that bishops are sometimes left to decide on their own," he added.

Consequently, a listening cell and a supervisory committee, composed of a magistrate, an ecclesiastical lawyer, a psychiatrist and a psychotherapist, were set up in December.