Victims Hope Meeting with French Bishops Will Lead to Concrete Action

By Celine Hoyeau
La Croix International
November 5, 2018

https://international.la-croix.com/news/victims-hope-meeting-with-french-bishops-will-lead-to-concrete-action/8775?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=e-mail&utm_content=05-11-2018&utm_campaign=newsletter_crx_lci&PMID=0993ce75a05e850a9ee6d7668f102aad

Opening of the Plenary Session of the French Bishops Conference with victims of clergy sex abuse. (Photo by Laurent Ferriere/Hans Lucas)

French bishops collectively met with victims of clerical sexual abuse for the first time for a session of testimony and discussion that participants later described as of “rare quality.”Veronique Garnier, who was abused by a priest for two years from the age of 13, says she survived for years in what she described as “deadly silence” because “no one wanted to listen to us.”Now, she says that she was impressed by the “totally different kind of silence, a great silence” that reigned during her meeting with 30 French bishops gathered in a circle around her at the beginning of their Plenary Assembly in Lourdes on Saturday Nov. 3.“In a sense, I somehow felt re-integrated into the body of the...