TOULOUSE (FRANCE)
The Tablet [Market Harborough, England]
July 14, 2025
By Bess Twiston Davies
The Archbishop of Toulouse appointed a priest who served a prison sentence for raping a minor as diocesan chancellor and episcopal delegate for marriage.
Archbishop Guy de Kerimel said that by appointing Fr Dominique Spina to the post he had “chosen the path of mercy”.
In 2006, Spina was convicted of raping and sexually assaulting a 16-year-old student while serving as his spiritual director in the 1990s at Notre-Dame de Bétharram school at Lestelle-Bétharram, in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques department of south-west France.
In a statement last week to Agence France-Presse, Archbishop de Kerimel said: “It is true that Fr Spina served a five-year prison sentence, including one year suspended, for very serious acts that took place nearly 30 years ago”.
He added that the Church had “nothing to reproach this priest for in the last 30 years”. The post was administrative, he continued, adding that Spina “no longer” exercised “pastoral responsibility, other than celebrating the Eucharist, alone or exceptionally for the faithful”.
The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) condemned the appointment in a statement on its website: “After the mammoth report released in France in 2021 where it was found that over 330,000 children were abused over the course of 70 years, how could the archbishop think this would be acceptable to survivors, the faithful and the public?”
SNAP urged the Pope to intervene, describing the appointment as a “gross betrayal” of clergy abuse survivors. Under canon law, diocesan chancellors must be of “unimpaired reputation and above all suspicion”.
Spina’s victim told the satirical French weekly Charlie Hebdo that “rapes and repeated, violent sexual attacks took place”. Referring to Spina’s trial and failed appeal at France’s Court of Assizes, he said: “Two Courts of Assizes is not exactly nothing. What more does the Archbishop of Toulouse need? For the victims, mercy doesn’t exist.”
The victim – who spoke anonymously – said that during the initial public trial Spina had accused him of frequenting prostitutes: “I had to prove before the tribunal that I did not have AIDS.”
He said he had the impression Spina had been “completely whitewashed”, saying: “People like this should absolutely not be in any position of responsibility. In any other role, if you commit acts like this, you do not come back.”
In the aftermath of the trial, he told Charlie Hebdo, he received death threats, and the case damaged his career teaching in private Catholic schools in the region. Although he wished to remain in south-west France to be close to his family – including a handicapped sibling – he eventually left.