FRANCE
La Croix International
November 9, 2018
By Anne-Bénédicte Hoffner
On the day before the closing of their plenary assembly, bishops decide ‘by a massive majority’ to establish independent commission
A “profound moment of encounter, in humility and listening.” This is how the president of the French Bishops’ Conference Archbishop Georges Pontier of Marseille described the meeting with victims of sexual abuse.
By meeting victims for the first time at their plenary assembly in Lourdes, the bishops acknowledged “the long-lasting and profound damage” caused by the acts of abuse themselves and also by “the inadequate taking into account of these acts by ecclesial authorities, and the feeling of not being heard at all.”
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