STRASBOURG (FRANCE)
The Tablet [Market Harborough, England]
September 18, 2025
By Tom Heneghan
A petition by priests spoke of ‘moral gangrene’ in the archdiocese when the vicar general returned to post after a abuse allegation was deemed beyond the statute of limitations.
Fr Hubert Schmitt, vicar general of the Archdiocese of Strasbourg, stepped down after a public controversy over a sexual abuse claim, a month after another such incident in the Archdiocese of Toulouse.
Schmitt, 71, was suspended from the same post in 2023 after allegations of misconduct with an altar boy in 1993 emerged. The Mulhouse prosecutor ruled last year that the allegations were beyond the statute of limitations and ended the inquiry.
His official reappearance as vicar general in August prompted an outcry on social media. An anonymous petition by priests spoke of “moral gangrene” and urged the Vatican to make an apostolic visitation.
“Faced with the outcry, and in order to preserve the peace of mind of the diocesan government, I submitted my resignation today to the Archbishop of Strasbourg. He accepted it,” Schmitt said on 10 September.
Schmitt was responsible for the “charity and care” of the archdiocesan curia. He remains a priest and canon of Strasbourg cathedral.
“This is a crushing blow for the victims,” alleged victim Emmanuel Siess told French television after Schmitt returned to the post. “I had the impression that the diocese was taking into account the trauma we are experiencing. With this appointment, Archbishop [Pascal] Delannoy is taking a step backward.”
This came a month after Archbishop Guy de Kerimel of Toulouse reversed his appointment of Fr Dominique Spina, a convicted rapist of a 16-year old boy, as diocesan chancellor. The archbishop initially defended the appointment as an act of mercy since Spina had served four years in prison for the offence.
But he reconsidered after objections from the bishops’ conference, under its new president Cardinal Jean-Marc Aveline of Marseille, who took the unusual step of telling him publicly that the case could only “disconcert the people of God”.
The Schmitt case further burdens the Church in Strasbourg. Reports have noted critically that Bishop Gilles Reithinger, 51, who quit last year as an auxiliary there “for health reasons” amid questions of abuse and cover-ups while he was head of the Foreign Missions of Paris (MEP), said a Sunday Mass after Schmitt at the same pilgrimage site in late August.
Previous Archbishop Luc Ravel resigned in 2023 under criticism of his isolated and authoritarian style of management. His predecessor, Archbishop Jean-Pierre Grallet, stepped down the previous year after admitting he had made “inappropriate gestures” to a woman in the past.