Next stop, Rome. While the French Catholic hierarchy continues to draw the consequences of the report of the independent commission on sexual abuse in the Church (Ciase), it will soon be up to Pope Francis to be officially seized of the conclusions of the latter, chaired by Jean- Marc Sauvé, honorary vice-president of the Council of State.
Some representatives of victims’ associations are already urging Emmanuel Macron to put this subject on the table during his meeting with the pontiff, on November 26, in Rome. “If we wait, the Pope will do nothing”, fears François Devaux, co-founder of the now-dissolved association La Parole libérée, whose action has largely contributed to the creation of Ciase. The twenty-two members of the Sauvé commission will meet the head of the Catholic Church on December 9 in Rome.
In the meantime, after the bishops at the beginning of November, the Conference of Men and Women Religious of France (Corref), which brings together some 450 congregations and institutes present in the territory, has in turn decided to create an independent Commission for the recognition and reparation (CIRR) for victims of sexual violence in the Catholic Church, Friday, November 19, during its plenary assembly, in Lourdes. It will be chaired by Antoine Garapon, former secretary general of the Institute of Higher Studies on Justice and member of the Ciase, who delivered his report on October 5.
Designed as “A third of justice”, its mission will be to receive victims, to recognize the facts and their consequences, and to mediate between them and the institutes to which the aggressors belonged. This procedure may in particular lead to compensation for the victim. The CIRR will be in contact with the body created for the same purpose by the bishops, the Independent National Authority for Recognition and Reparation (Inirr), so that both apply “As far as possible the same rules and the same principles”.
La Corref, which re-elected the Dominican theologian Véronique Margron at its head, had already recognized the responsibility of its members in the spring. About a third of the minor victims of sexual violence in the Church would have been attacked by a member of congregations and religious institutes, against two thirds by a diocesan priest, according to Ciase, which estimates at 216,000 the number of people today adults having been victims of one or the other during his minority.
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