FRANCE
Crux
By Amicie Pelissie Du Rausas
Special to Crux March 24, 2016
PARIS – While the French Church does not always live harmoniously with its anti-clerical state and culture, it has been mostly spared the accusations of financial mismanagement and sexual abuse that the Church in other European countries has known.
Our régime of laïcité — a strict separation between Church and state, in which the public square is declared religion-free — has meant, for example, close state supervision over Catholic educational facilities.
Yet as a third case of clerical sex abuse came to light last week in the Archdiocese of Lyon, French Catholics have been wondering if they are not so different after all.
Proceedings opened Jan. 27 against Father Bernard Preynat, charged with “sexual aggression and rape of minors” between 1986 and 1991 at Lyon’s Saint-Luc parish, where he ran a large Catholic Scout group over two decades. (See a French op-ed in La Croix and a report in Le Monde.)
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