Members of the Catholic Academy of France criticize the Ciase report on child crime in the Church

The coincidence of facts troubled members of the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church (Ciase), which released on October 5 a demanding report on sexual assault on minors and vulnerable adults in the institution since 1950 Wednesday, November 24, they learned from Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, president of the Conference of Bishops of France (CEF), that their audience by Pope Francis, set for December 9, was “Postponed” by the Vatican. “The reason given is the trip of the Holy Father to Cyprus and Greece confirmed this week and after which the Pope will need rest”, he exposes to the members of Ciase, who says to himself ” sorry “ that this meeting “Cannot take place before Christmas”.

However, the reason for this modification of the agenda could be more complex than the one put forward. First, because the pontiff’s trip was officially announced by the Vatican on November 5. Then, because a text of fifteen pages very critical on the work of Ciase was sent to Rome by members of the Catholic Academy of France, an institution bringing together Catholic intellectuals, founded in 2008. It constitutes a demolition in rule of the report and recommendations produced by the twenty experts gathered in February 2019 by Jean-Marc Sauvé.

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The critical analysis of the eight signatories of this unpublished text, revealed by The cross and to which The world had access, is uniformly negative. The authors – Jean-Robert Armogathe, director of the theological review Communio, Philippe Capelle-Dumont, professor of philosophy at the faculty of theology of Strasbourg, the lawyer Jean-Luc Chartier, the historian Jean-Dominique Durand, the lawyer Yvonne Flour, the philosopher Pierre Manent, Hugues Portelli, dean of the faculty of social and economic sciences of the Catholic Institute of Paris, and Emmanuel Tawil, lecturer at Paris-II – contest the methodology which led Inserm to estimate, for Ciase, at 330,000 the number of people today ‘ eight adults who would have been sexually assaulted during their minority by a priest, a religious or a layman on an ecclesial mission. The estimate is 216,000 for priests and religious alone.

“Questionable recommendations”

They oppose Inserm’s assessment of the data obtained by the survey of the team from the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, which, on the basis of the examination of archives, especially ecclesiastical ones, results in a range of between 4 832 and 27,808 victims. “One can wonder about the reasons which led the commission to retain a figure rather than another. (…) Scientific rigor did not preside over its work ”, assert the authors of the note.

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