Louise Sallé, edited by Ugo Pascolo 09:27, December 06, 2022
For more effective treatment of offenses committed within the Church, the Conference of Bishops of France has just established a "national episcopal criminal court", a first in the world.
A measure which follows the report of Ciase, the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church, published at the end of 2021, revealing the extent of internal violence in the institution.
A revolution for the Catholic Church in France.
The Conference of Bishops of France inaugurated Monday in Paris a "national episcopal criminal court" to judge effectively and in a single place the offenses committed within the Church.
A world first which was a recommendation of Ciase, the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church, which had assessed a year ago at nearly 330,000 minor victims of sexual abuse since 1950 (including 216,000 by a priest ).
>> READ ALSO -
Sexual violence in the Church: 11 new victims reported by bishops of Picardy
Members of the court take an oath on the Bible
This judicial body has no equivalent abroad.
It can deal, as of today, with cases of sexual assault on adults, financial crimes or abuse of authority, with a view to excluding or not from the Church the Catholics involved, whether they are clerics or not.
These judgments have hitherto been made in the dioceses.
They now have a national character, for sentences that are more harmonized across the country and less influenced by local interests.
At the headquarters of the Conference of French Bishops in Paris, in the chapel of Saint-François-de-Sales, the inauguration ceremony begins with a mass.
Among the faithful, eight priests and five lay people, including four women, all volunteers to take on new functions within the new national episcopal court of which they are a part.
Each of them is called by Monseigneur de Moulin-Beaufort, president of the Conference of Bishops of France, to take the oath on the Bible.
>> Find the morning of the day in replay and podcast here
No judgment concerning sexual abuse of minors
The judges appointed by the bishops are presided over by a vicar general, Father Albert Jacquemin.
They can now pronounce sentences of exclusion from the Church, going as far as the prohibition to give or receive the sacraments.
Each case can be reported either by the dioceses or by the faithful directly to the Promoter of Justice, a kind of public prosecutor.
"It will keep all the affairs of the dioceses away and this is called the change of scenery, it is an additional guarantee of independence", underlines at the microphone of Europe 1 Ambroise Laurent, deputy secretary general at the Conference of Bishops. of France.
But Rome keeps control of the most sensitive cases since sexual violence against minors will continue to be tried in the Vatican.
Unless this new court, unique in its kind, acts as a case law by being delegated the handling of certain cases by the Holy See.