Engaged in the fight against pedophilia in the Church, Bishop Éric de Moulins-Beaufort was elected President of the Conference of Bishops of France Wednesday.

PORTRAIT

It is a new face, young and committed, which takes the head of the bishops of France. The Archbishop of Reims Éric de Moulins-Beaufort was elected president of the Conference of Bishops of France (CEF) Wednesday, for a three-year term, the institution announced Thursday. Aged 57, he will take over on 1 July from 75-year-old Georges Pontier, head of the CEF since 2013, and will have to lead and reform the Catholic Church in France in the face of pedophile cases.

A young and intellectual bishop

Graduate of Sciences-Po. Born in 1962 in Landau, Germany, Éric de Moulins-Beaufort is a young bishop who embodies a new generation of the episcopate. This confirmed intellectual, who says he discovered his vocation at the age of 11, is both a teacher and theologian. "EMB" is notably a graduate of Science-Po Paris. He attended the French seminary in Rome (1990-1992), was director at the Paris seminary and taught, notably at the Faculty of Theology Notre-Dame.

Ordained priest in 1991, this prelate was marked by the figure of the former Archbishop of Paris Jean-Marie Lustiger, then that of Bishop André Vingt-Trois, of which he was the private secretary, from 2005 to 2008, after having been parish priest of Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis parish. Since last November, he was Archbishop of Rheims, having been ten years auxiliary bishop and vicar general of the archdiocese of Paris.

Social networks. His entourage praises "a brilliant spirit, end, and infinite patience", a "sense of listening" and a great capacity for work, reports AFP. This tall man, who runs, swims and rides an electric bike, can be "conventional, but not reactionary," according to relatives who have rubbed shoulders in Paris. And for proof: present on the Internet, Éric de Moulins-Beaufort does not hesitate to use his Facebook account and the site of the diocese of Reims to address the faithful.

Supporter of an inter-religious dialogue, Eric de Moulins-Beaufort had sent a message of rally at the inauguration of the Reims Mosque in March 2018, said France 3 Grand-Est. And in the face of the criticism that this visit had given him, the bishop had replied, again in a Facebook post: "I would like Catholic men worried about the presence of Islam in our country to be so devoted to Mass or to Eucharistic adoration as the men I saw at the mosque on a Thursday evening at the time of prayer. " It is now with this same freedom of tone and spirit that the new President of the Conference of Bishops of France will be able to tackle the challenges facing the Church of France.

Figure fighting against sexual abuse in the Church

No question of "shirking". The election of Bishop Éric de Moulins-Beaufort occurs in a context of disarray of Catholics, related to pedophilia cases in the Church. And on this specific point, the archbishop said Thursday morning that there was no question of "shirking", reports La Croix . "We are forced to face the fact that too many priests have been able for years to harm (...) without being seen or being seen without being rendered harmless," he told a hundred bishops of France gathered in Lourdes.

Having found "serious and inadmissible facts committed by priests" when he was auxiliary bishop of the diocese of Paris, said Le Monde , Eric de Moulins-Beaufort has since been involved in the fight against pedophilia in recent years. In Paris, Éric de Moulins-Beaufort was notably at the initiative of the creation in 2016 of a commission to prevent sexual assault, then coordinated the fight against pedophilia in the diocese. In the same year he also conducted interviews with people accusing the priest and "psychoanalyst" Tony Anatrella of sexual assault.

"Go to the end of the work". On the editorial board of two major journals, Communio and the New Theological Review , Éric de Moulins-Beaufort published in the latter in 2018 an article entitled "What Happened to Us? From Idleness to Action in the Face of Abuse in the Church ", in which he suggests legal and pastoral paths for ecclesial leaders.

"We lived in the illusion before, we went out, now we have to go to the end of the work," he insisted on last October, in an interview with the diocese of Paris. By taking the presidency of the Conference of Bishops of France, Bishop Éric de Moulins-Beaufort will now be able to join the actions to the word.

The president of the CEF is not the head of the Catholic Church in France, each bishop being a master in his diocese under the authority of the pope. But he embodies the first confession of France to the authorities and the population, and sits on the permanent council of the CEF where decisions are taken collegially by the bishops.