It is the hour of public confessions in the French episcopate.
In a letter, publicly revealed in Lourdes on Monday November 7, by Mgr Éric de Moulins-Beaufort, President of the Bishops of France, Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, former Archbishop of Bordeaux, admitted to having
“behaved in a reprehensible manner with a young 14-year-old girl”
,
“thirty-five years ago”
, when he was a
“priest”
in the diocese of Marseille where he comes from.
It is a new shock for the Church because Mgr Ricard, 78, is a figure of French Catholicism: twice elected president of the Conference of Bishops, from 2001 to 2008 - years when the episcopate entered into the fight against the phenomenon of pedophilia - he was appointed cardinal by Benedict XVI in 2006 and participated in the election of Pope Francis in 2013. Although retired, he is still a member of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the most important Vatican.
Read alsoSexual abuse in the Church: penitent bishops determined never to be “accomplices” again
Bishop Ricard's letter was first read on Sunday, within the walls of…
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