STRASBOURG (FRANCE)
La Croix International [France]
April 5, 2023
By Christophe Henning
Archbishop Luc Ravel, who awaits the findings from an apostolic visitation into his management of the Archdiocese of Strasbourg, removes his senior auxiliary bishop as vicar general
Never before has tension reached this level in the wealthy Archdiocese of Strasbourg in the Alsace region of d’Alsace (DNA) reported on Tuesday that Archbishop Luc Ravel removed his senior auxiliary bishop, Christian Kratz, as vicar general, allegedly for mishandling a clergy sexual abuse case. The paper said the archbishop took the action on March 23.
Kratz, 70, was appointed auxiliary bishop of Strasbourg at the end of 2000. DNA reported that Ravel, who became archbishop in February 2017, also removed Bishop Kratz from the episcopal council on March 30.
Responsibilities
Bishop Kratz told La Croix that he learned of his being sidelined through a letter that was slipped under his office door. He said Archbishop Ravel, 65, justified the sanction of Kratz’s alleged mishandling of the sexual abuse case of Emmanuel Wach, a former priest who was chaplain at a Catholic middle school in Strasbourg. A former student came forward last July and said Wach had raped him in 2008. Wach committed suicide on January 1.
“Though the public criminal action is terminated, it remains to establish certain criminal responsibilities at the level of French justice as well as at the level of Church justice,” Archbishop Ravel said a week after Wach’s suicide. He expressed surprise at Wach’s “sudden transfer” in 2009 to be a parish priest in charge of young people, even though Wach had previously been implicated with possession of child pornography.
He was eventually condemned by the French criminal justice system in 2013 and sentenced to six months in prison with a suspended sentence. The following year, Archbishop Jean-Pierre Gallet, then the ordinary of Strasbourg, had Wach dismissed from the clerical state.
“I am stunned, I don’t understand what the archbishop (Ravel) is accusing me of. It’s unbelievable,” Kratz said. “I don’t know what scores he’s trying to settle with me, but this doesn’t hold water.”
Bernard Xibaut, chancellor of the diocese, said Archbishop Ravel’s decision can be explained by “the desire to emphasize the consequences for not denouncing sexual abuse within the Church”.
Concordat diocese
Bishop Kratz did not attend the annual Chrism Mass on Tuesday evening. He said he is waiting for an explanation from the archbishop, whom he has not seen since being sacked as vicar general. Kratz also alerted the apostolic nuncio, but for the moment there has been no official reaction. “It’s time for the archdiocese to clear up the situation,” he said.
These disputes at the highest level of the archdiocesan curia add to the malaise that has paralyzed the Alsatian Church the past several months. A priest who spoke on condition of anonymity said, “The archdiocese is at a standstill.”
This has been the widely shared opinion since last June 2022 when Pope Francis ordered an apostolic visitation of the archdiocese to investigate Archbishop Ravel’s “pastoral governance”.
Bishop Stanislas Lalanne, currently head of Pontoise Diocese, and Archbishop Joël Mercier, former secretary of the Dicastery for the Clergy, carried out the investigation last summer. They submitted their findings to Rome in the
The issue is all the more delicate because the Archdiocese of Strasbourg is governed by a concordat since it was still part of Germany in 1905 when France issued its law on the separation of Church and State.
Alsace is still under the application of the concordat signed by Napoleon. Priests are paid by the State, and the appointment of the archbishop is the joint responsibility of the Vatican and the President of France.
La Croix attempted to speak to Archbishop Ravel but an archdiocesan official said he was “held up by meetings with priests and seminarians preceding the Chrism Mass”.
Ravel, who is a Canon Regular of the Congregation of Saint Victor, showed great promise when he arrived in the archdiocese in 2017 after spending the previous eight years as head of France’s military ordinariate. But a number of priests in the archdiocese said Ravel has never taken the time to meet with those who have asked to see him. They said he tends to surround himself with a close- knit circle and has a reputation for treating people rudely. Some also have criticized him for spending a lot of time in Paris and not being available, even though he was elected to the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences last December.
Archbishop Ravel did not attend the plenary assembly of the French Bishops’ Conference (CEF) last month in Lourdes because of medical reasons. He had already canceled a conference to launch a new book, which had been scheduled for March 1 at a cultural center in Strasbourg.
“A total lack of management”
The archdiocese is reputedly difficult to manage, given its 500 priests and 250 lay employees. It is a veritable enterprise, with no human resources department. Archbishop Ravel sacked the archdiocese’s business manager, Jacques Bourrier, last May, just a few weeks before the man was to retire. Bourier, a former naval officer, said the archdiocese suffers from “a total lack of management”.
Ravel has both his defenders and his accusers. The apostolic visit was “a slap in the face”, according to one priest, even though the archbishop issued a statement saying he hoped “our magnificent Church of Alsace would emerge peaceful from this visit.”
Now more and more people are speculating that Ravel may be on his way out. “His absence at Lourdes was symptomatic,” said one French bishop. He said he hoped for a “rapid outcome” for this important archdiocese.