Abuses committed by priests as well as non-religious people, says independent commission
Bishops prepare to attend a mass. Photograph: Eric Cabanis/AFP/Getty
Reuters in Paris
An investigation into sexual abuse in the French Catholic church has found that an estimated 216,000 children were victims of abuse by clergy since 1950.
The revelations in France are the latest to rock the Roman Catholic church after a series of sexual abuse scandals around the world, often involving children, over the past 20 years.
The abuse was systemic, said Jean-Marc Sauvé, the head of the commission that compiled the report. Sauvé added at a public, online presentation of the report that the church had shown “deep, total and even cruel indifference for years”, protecting itself rather than the victims.
The church not only did not take the necessary measures to prevent abuse but also failed to report abuse and sometimes knowingly put children in touch with predators, he said. State prosecutors had been alerted about some of the cases encountered, Sauvé said.
Speaking just after Sauvé at the presentation of the report, the archbishop of Reims and head of the French conference of bishops, Éric de Moulins-Beaufort, spoke of shame, asked for forgiveness and promised to act.
The commission was established by Catholic bishops in France in 2018 to shed light on abuses and restore public confidence in the church at a time of dwindling congregations. It has worked independently from the church.
Sauvé said the problem remained. He added that the church had until the 2000s shown indifference to victims and had only started to change its attitude in 2015-16.
The Catholic church’s teaching on subjects such as sexuality, obedience and the sanctity of the priesthood helped created blind spots that allowed sexual abuse by clergy to happen, Sauvé said, adding that the church needed to reform the way it approached those issues to rebuild trust with society.
Sauvé said the commission had identified about 2,700 victims through a call for testimony, and thousands more had been found in archives.
But a wide-ranging study by research and polling groups estimated there had been about 216,000 victims, and the number could rise to 330,000 when including abuse by lay members.
There have been about 2,900-3,200 suspected paedophiles in the French church over the last 70 years, Sauvé said.
“You are a disgrace to our humanity,” François Devaux, who set up victims’ association La Parole Libérée, told church representatives at the public presentation of the report, before Sauvé took the floor.
“In this hell there have been abominable mass crimes … but there has been, even worse, betrayal of trust, betrayal of morale, betrayal of children.”
He thanked the commission and said he hoped the report would be a turning point: “You finally bring victims an institutional recognition of the responsibility of the church.”