Posts Tagged ‘France’

French Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church rebuts critique

Monday, February 14th, 2022
https://focus.nouvelobs.com/2021/09/30/196/0/4832/2416/1200/630/60/0/da46337_68401916-sauve.jpg

Last October, Jean-Marc Sauvé gave the French Bishops’ Conference the report he and members of the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (CIASE) had compiled. Then in November, the French Catholic Academy published a 15-page critique of the report. The Academy has about 70 members. “The most serious defects of the CIASE report, Read more

Laypeople also among perpetrators in Church sex abuse scandal

Thursday, October 21st, 2021
ciase report

It’s a figure that has gone largely unnoticed. In the flood of information and disturbing statistics published earlier this month by France’s Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (CIASE), too little attention has been paid to an important detail in the commission’s report – an estimated 115,000 minors and vulnerable adults were sexually Read more

Catholic Church’s prayers for victims of sexual abuse begin to ring hollow

Thursday, October 7th, 2021
sex abuse

Early Tuesday morning, I opened my laptop to work. But first, I meandered over to Twitter, expecting to read a few comments on Krysten Sinema before diving into my Persian presentation. Instead, I started crying. I don’t cry easily. And these were not tears borne of sadness but of frustration. On Tuesday morning, an independent Read more

Inquiry finds 3000 sex abusers in France Catholic Church

Monday, October 4th, 2021

Around three thousand paedophiles have operated inside the French Catholic Church since 1950. The numbers were released, Sunday by Jean-Marc Sauvé, the head of an independent commission examining church sex abuse. The commission has been investigating for 2 1/2 years. 22 cases of alleged crimes have been forwarded to prosecutors and more than 40 cases Read more

Language, love, laïcité and violence

Monday, November 9th, 2020
clamour and silence

I write in support of Imam Gamal Foude’s comments on the need for love and respect in combatting violence. With all due respect to French leaders, I think they could start by reviewing the implications of laïcité. At this time, they have much to say about “Islamic terrorism”.  Worse, some of the language they are Read more

France must define its values so it can defend them

Thursday, November 5th, 2020
Basilica of Notre-Dame de Nice

France is the most rigorously secular state of the democratic world. Separation of Church and State enshrined in the famous 1905 law was the result of over a century of hostility between the Catholic Church and the French State. Mutual hostility began with the 1789 French Revolution. Until then monarchical France bathed in the glory Read more

Christchurch imam suggests France copy NZs post-terror attack response

Thursday, November 5th, 2020

A Christchurch imam wants France’s president to take a lesson from New Zealand’s response to extremist violence. Imam Gamal Fouda spoke out after two beheadings and the murders of three people at a Catholic church in Nice. The attacks are abhorrent and contradict “the tolerant teachings of Islam and all good human values,” he says. Read more

Macron’s clash with Islam sends jolt through France’s long debate about secularism

Monday, November 2nd, 2020
President Macron President Erdogan

On 6 October, when Samuel Paty, a popular history and geography teacher at a school in a quiet Paris suburb, presented a copy of the cartoons of the prophet Muhammad that provoked the attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine five years ago, he self-evidently had no idea of the tragic consequence for his own life, French Read more

Pope praying for the families of terror attack victims

Monday, November 2nd, 2020

Pope Francis says he is praying for the families of the three people killed at Nice’s Notre Dame cathedral last week. He is asking the Lord to bring them comfort and he commends the victims to God’s mercy. The attack, one of two at churches in France last week was attributed to Muslim extremists. It Read more

History teacher’s murder by Islamist group prompts rapid response from Paris

Thursday, October 22nd, 2020

France’s president Emmanuel Macron says a teacher’s murder last week was the work of domestic militant Islamist group. The murdered teacher, Samuel Paty, had discussed caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed with his class earlier this month. After the murder, 16 people were initially detained, by police. They included members of the killer’s family and five Read more