A new case of a priest suspected of sexual assault resurfaces from the past in Lyon

Europe 1 with AFP 6:36 p.m., January 21, 2022

The Lyon public prosecutor's office launched and then closed an investigation, between 2019 and 2020, into sexual assaults attributed by two young women to a deceased Lyon priest, former superior of a reputable educational institution, according to a judicial source.

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This affair, revealed on Friday by the weekly Tribune de Lyon and the Mediacités information site, comes four days after the diocese communicated on post-mortem accusations against another religious, Father Louis Ribes, who died in 1994. -ci would have made "very many victims" in the years 1970-80, according to the archdiocese of Lyon, which reported several testimonies concerning this priest, a painter sometimes nicknamed "the Picasso of churches", whose works adorn buildings in the region.

A priest evolving in the incriminated school environment

Other testimonies implicate, this time, Georges Babolat, an influential personality of Lyon Catholicism who died in 2006. From 1978 to 2001, he was the superior of the Chartreux institution, a prestigious establishment for many generations.

The incriminated facts are however within the framework of a holiday camp located in Haute-Savoie, independent of the Chartreux according to the management of the establishment.

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According to the archdiocese, two victims "brought their testimony" to the diocese in 2016, in writing.

In response, Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, already confronted at the time with the Preynat affair, sent the mother of one of them a letter in which he asked "forgiveness on behalf of the whole Church for this scandal". , affirming the need "to operate a great purification of memory".

In April 2019, the mother reported the facts to the prosecution, which opened an investigation into sexual assaults on minors.

Abandonment of the proceedings after the death of the priest

The following month, a third victim came forward to the diocese, an official of which alerted the justice system in turn, in November, the religious authorities of Lyon said on Friday. Heard at the time by the investigators, two young women confirmed that they had been touched by the priest in the 1990s. of complicity.

The diocese added on Friday that to date it had received "no other testimony" against Father Babolat, "even after the Ciase report", published last October on pedocrime in the Church of France since the 1950s. This report estimated that 330,000 people were victims of sexual violence when they were minors, by clerics, religious or people connected with the Church.

After its publication, three people told the diocese of facts dating back to the 1950s, concerning a priest living in the Chartreux, and committed outside the institution.

But it was not about Father Babolat, underlined the archdiocese.