The findings of a second report into the activities of L’Arche founder Jean Vanier are even worse than the initial report.
While the first report found Vanier perverted Catholic doctrine about Jesus and Mary to justify his own sexual compulsions and abuse women, a subsequent report discovered an even worse side to the great man.
The movement he created had at its core a secret, mystical-sexual “sect,” and was founded for the precise purpose of hiding the sect’s deviant activities from church authorities.
The findings have rocked the group to its core.
They are especially shocked as L’Arche commissioned independent scholars to investigate after receiving a first complaint from a victim a few years before Vanier’s death.
Vanier’s deceptions saw him eulogised by many as a “living saint”. Among his admirers was Pope Francis, who thought of him as a “great” Christian.
What now?
The latest revelations about Vanier’s fall from grace have resulted in L’Arche’s national and regional leaders meeting for the past week.
They aim to chart a path forward, now that their official history has been shown to be a lie.
Their emotions are raw.
“I believed in something, in a vision that then is revealed to you and you’re told it’s not like that,” says Azucena Bustamante.
She oversees five L’Arche communities in Central America. “It does frustrate me — the damage it has caused to a lot of people who believed in this, and then found out everything we were made to believe, it’s a lie.”
L’Arche’s leaders have apologised to the victims, thanked them for their courage in coming forward and assumed responsibility for not spotting the abuses earlier.
They say they questioned Vanier repeatedly as soon as the first victims came forward and asked what he knew about the community founder French Dominican Fr Thomas Philippe’s 1956 Holy Office condemnation, but he lied to them.
Jean Vanier
Vanier – a layman – founded L’Arche in 1964 in northern France.
He built the utopian-style, Catholic-inspired community into an international movement bringing people with and without disabilities to live together in a spirit of mutual respect.
Vanier arrived at his calling after joining a spiritual community, L’Eau Vive, in 1950.
Reports say Vanier fell under Philippe’s spell and was initiated into his mystical-sexual practices.
In 1956 the Vatican forbade Philippe from public or private ministry, ordered L’Eau Vive dissolved and forbade its members from reconstituting the community.
Nonetheless, Philippe, Vanier and the women they had manipulated disobeyed and regularly met in secret.
Over time, Philippe resumed his priestly ministry as his Dominican superiors ignored the Vatican sanctions.
The researchers concluded Vanier founded L’Arche as a “screen” to hide the original L’Eau Vive group’s reunification.
However, they noted Vanier’s sincere commitment to help people who would otherwise be institutionalised.
Of the 25 women Vanier abused, none were intellectually disabled.
While Vanier and Philippe’s deviant practices didn’t extend beyond the core “sect” at the original community, the researchers are calling for vigilance, especially in the way authority and power are exercised in L’Arche’s numerous communities.
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