"We are facing a real social question! It's as if we didn't know how to approach it, and so, in order not to discuss it, to debate it, we put it in the Constitution," the archbishop told Vatican News on October 30, a day after Macron made his comments.

"This appears to be an admission of weakness in our ability to calmly debate the subject of abortion," added the 70-year-old d'Ornellas, who has been archbishop of Rennes since 2006.

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The community is a public association of clerics founded by a French priest in 1976 under the patronage of the late Cardinal Giuseppe Siri of Genoa (Italy).

It was established to send its priests, who live in small communities, to support dioceses lacking vocations.

The community has become one of the most prolific sources for priestly vocations in France and currently numbers 168 priests and deacons and is attracting many vocations. It has men in parishes in 28 dioceses throughout France, and many bishops are asking for reinforcements.

According to figures from the French Bishops' Conference (CEF), the community could represent between 20-40 percent of all the active clergy in the country in 30 years.

The community's superior, Father Paul Préaux, has asked the Congregation for the Clergy for advice and assistance regarding the management of its growth.

The Vatican office is sending "visitators" to look at the development of the community from the outside and help in discerning its future.

A Vatican source confirmed that it is "a mission of accompaniment in response to a French request and has nothing to do with an inspection".

Bishop Benoît Bertrand from the French Diocese of Mende will lead the visitation. He will be assisted by three others - Bishop André Marceau, retired ordinary of Nice; Father Matthieu Dupont, rector of the seminary of Versailles; and Sister Anne Descour, provincial of the Religious Sisters of the Assumption.

This is a periodic pastoral visit like the regular visits in the monastic world," said Bishop Bertrand.

"The Holy See is inviting us to identify and recognise the benefits of the community and perhaps highlight some points for attention," he noted.

While in the first years of its existence the community experienced some departures, what concerns the leaders today is more related to fatigue and burn-out that can affect a certain generation.

Inter-generational fraternity and the place reserved for the older priests, soon to be in their eighties, are also concerns.

"What support is there for elderly priests who have given their whole lives?" wondered Préaux. "I listen to what the pope says about our elders in his catechesis," he added.

"We will be able to help the Community of Saint Martin to fit better into the Church of France," said Bishop Bertrand.

He and his team will visit the 40 places where Saint Martin priests are currently serving and will consult with the local bishops. They will also carry out a visitation at the Community's seminary in Evron.

"It is a question of supporting the community with vigilance and benevolence," said Bishop Bertrand.

Sources

La Croix International

Although the bishops say Dalle's "trial period has not been confirmed" she says she had "been fired".

Her dismissal follows various slip-ups in communications after the release of an independent report into sexual abuse in the Church in France between 1950 and 2020.

The news came only a few days after the conclusion of the French bishops' plenary assembly in Lourdes. This focused on ways to apply the recommendations made by the independent commission in October.

Dalle's short employment with the Conference began just before the "explosive" report from the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church (CIASE) was released.

The spokeswoman had a solid reputation for managing various crisis situations. This, plus her clear-and-straightforward communication style saw her appointed to undertake the delicate mission of managing the French bishops' press communications when the report was released to the public. A furore was expected.

After accepting the report, which said priests who learn of abuse in Confession must report it to secular authorities, Conference head Archbishop Éric de Moulins-Beaufort fumbled badly.

He insisted the seal of the confessional was above the laws of France's secular republic.

The difficulty with this comment, however, is that while French law has always respected confessional secrecy, more recently radical imams have been insisting sharia trumps civil law. This has forced the secular state to reassert its primacy in legal affairs.

If Muslims have been called to order, Catholics had to be too.

Ideally, Dalle would have anticipated this political minefield and issued a bland statement letting the state avoid a confrontation with its majority faith.

Instead, Moulins-Beaufort trumpeted the supremacy of canon law over French law.

The interior minister became involved.

Afterwards, both sought to calm the waters and agreed the confessional seal would remain inviolable.

Dalle continued the already signed-off battle alone, defending the Church's position, complaining anti-clericals misunderstood the issue. She mentioned the media. Politicians could not but feel this also meant them.

In a series of tweets that were subsequently deleted, she contextualized the data and figures contained in the report.

She recalled, for example, that the 330,000 victims was only an estimate.

Responding to people who were ascribing these abuse cases to the celibacy of priests, she said over a third were committed by laypeople.

In his closing speech at the plenary, however, Moulins-Beaufort made it clear the Church accepted full responsibility for any abuse.

To date only 17 dioceses have signed protocols with local judicial authorities to report abuse priests learn of.

Since few cases come through Confession, priests can report other cases they think are serious. This is widely seen as a reasonable compromise both sides can live with.

The bishops' conference has recommended other dioceses adopt this policy.

Source

• National Catholic Register
• The Tablet
• Image: News in 24

Last week it was widely reported that the conference would break the seal in abuse cases.

"One cannot change the canon law for France as it is international. A priest who today would violate the secrecy of the confession would be excommunicated," says Karine Dalle (pictured), the communications director of the French bishops' conference.

"This is what Archbishop Moulins-Beaufort wanted to say last week after the publication of the Sauvé report, when he said that the seal of confession was above the laws of the Republic," she says.

In no way did he say the seal of the confessional could or would be broken, Dalle emphasises.

De Moulins-Beaufort, who is the president of the French bishops' conference, did say, however, that protecting children is an "absolute priority" for the Catholic Church.

"He spoke the truth, but this truth is not audible in France for those who are not Catholic, and not understandable in France in the midst of debates on so-called ‘religious separatism,'" Dalle says.

Last week it seemed a French radio station reported bishops' conference president Moulins-Beaufort as saying protecting children from sexual abuse overrules confessional secrecy.

The radio also announced that the archbishop had conceded that priests should inform police of admissions of abuse made by penitents during confession, after meeting with French interior minister Gérald Darmanin.

The reports about breaking the confessional seal provoked consternation among Catholics.

While French law has long recognized the Church's strict rules about the confidentiality of the sacrament, the government is now contemplating amending the law for confessors. It has already pushed through changes to client confidentiality laws with lawyers and other secular professionals.

"If a lawyer or a doctor has knowledge of the abuse of a minor under 15 years of age, he or she is obliged not to respect professional secrecy. This is to prevent further crimes, because pedophile criminality is compulsive," Dalle says.

"What Interior Minister Darmanin said is that in the future, the seal of confession could fit into this framework. It wouldn't concern all confessional secrecy, of course, but I don't know where that will lead.

"But if the state tells us [that priests must report crimes against minors revealed in confession] there would be an obligation to leave the secrecy of confession. This would mean that the priests concerned would be excommunicated by Rome.

"There will certainly be some adjustments proposed, which Rome will accept or not.

Among the report's 45 recommendations was a request for the Church to reconsider whether to uphold the confessional seal in cases of abuse.

Source

• CNA
• CathNews
• Image: ESSCA Alumini

Delmas was among 31 French bishops who met with Pope Francis during their ad limina visit on 9 March.

The delegation included bishops from Bordeaux, Tours, Rouen, and other parts of Western France.

Vatican media photos of meeting show them sitting a meter apart from each other and nowhere near the pope, during their two and a half hour audience with him.

The Holy See Press Office has not commented on whether the French bishops greeted the pope with a handshake after the meeting, as is customary during ad limina visits.

Others the French bishops visited included curial officials at various Vatican dicasteries, although their visit was cut short by the worsening situation in Italy and France.

The day after the bishops visited Francis, the Vatican implemented precautionary measures in coordination with Italian authorities.

The Angers diocese says their afflicted bishop's symptoms are mild, and "his condition is currently not of concern".

After learning of his diagnosis, the 65-year old Delmas asked for "all of the faithful to persevere in prayer".

"May this time of trial be an opportunity to pray, especially for the sick, frail, and for health personnel".

Since returning from Italy, the French bishops are limiting contact with others, the French bishops' conference says.

Coronavirus cases in Italy have grown quickly in recent weeks, surpassing 24,700 documented cases.

A nationwide quarantine has been declared in Italy until 3 April in an attempt to slow the pandemic's spread.

The quarantine restricts movement within Italy. People have to stay in their homes except for cases of necessity, which may include going to work, to the pharmacy or hospital, or to the supermarket.

France's national restrictions include closing all cafes, restaurants and most businesses throughout the country. Over 125 people in France have died after contracting COVID-19.

Source

• The Catholic World Report
• Image: Catholic News Agency

The meeting, which is a first in France, follows an initial meeting between Children of Silence president Anne-Marie Jarzac (67) and two Bishops' Conference members.

"We told them that we needed to be recognised as the children of priests," she says.

Jarzac says she has also met with her local bishop, who had shown "sensitivity to the issue".

"Until now, we [Children of Silence] were given the impression that we were a threat to the Church," Jarzac says.

"Perhaps leaders were afraid that we would demand compensation. But we are not operating on that wavelength at all."

Jarzac says she was 16 before she found out her father was a priest.

She spoke only once with him as "the issue was painful for him."

She says she would like "to be able to meet with the pope in Rome and that he might provide some words of comfort" for those concerned.

"We are not responsible for our situation."

Jarzac is condemnatory of the "silence" in the Church over the children of priests.

While he was archbishop of Buenos Aires, the future Pope Francis said a priest who became a father should "leave the ministry and assume care for the child, even if he did not decide to marry the woman concerned."

"Since the child has a right to a mother, it also has the right to a father with a known face," he said.

An internal Vatican document setting out the procedure for dealing with cases of priests with children provides for an accelerated administrative procedure allowing a priest with a child to be relieved of his priestly obligations "in a few months".

Source

• La Croix
• Image: Washington Times

His intellectual standing and realistic manner of tackling problems without excessive nostalgia for the past are said to have contributed to his election.

Speaking after his appointment was announced last week, the Archbishop said he is determined to handle issues pragmatically and promised to avoid using excessively churchy language.

"We will never go back to the village society that existed before 1965 where people went to Mass out of a sense of duty.

"Today, social relations are governed mainly by the search for pleasure. We have a duty to evangelise this new world."

Speaking of the Church's sex abuse crisis, he said: "We need to face the fact that too many priests have behaved badly with young people without anyone noticing or that they were treated as inoffensive once their misdeeds became known."

All France's bishops agree that it's important to move forward from that position, he said.

Last year he published a much discussed article entitled "Que nous est-il arrivé? De la sidération à l'action devant les abus sexuels dans l'Église" (What has happened to us? From bewilderment to action on sex abuse in the Church).

In the article he sought to analyse the reasons for the crimes and suggested various legal and pastoral responses.

At the end of February this year, after a series of damaging revelations about sex abuse were circulated, he wrote a letter to Catholics in the Reims diocese.

He told them of his own "disgust and discouragement" that the revelations of "concealed" evil had caused.

"God has not abandoned his Church but, on the contrary, is working to purify it, including from the evil that exists within it and that it had obstinately refused to see," he wrote.

Since his appointment as archbishop of Reims, he has also faced the problems that many of his confrères have experienced, particularly the dwindling number of priests and the collapse of the traditional "parish network."

In addition to chairing the bishops' conference, de Moulins-Beaufort is the head of the French bishops' conference doctrinal commission, a member of the executive committee of the Cardinal Henri de Lubac International Associate, and is an editorial board member for two significant journals - Communio and the Nouvelle Revue Théologique (NRT).

Well-liked by the lay people with whom he worked in the Archdiocese of Paris, he is known for his even temperament and easy manner, as well as his sense of humour.

"I have never seen him get angry, or at least it took a lot for that to happen!" a former colleague commented.

He is "great news for the French Church," and a "well-balanced person" even though some may "find him a bit stiff."

Source

• La Croix
• Image: La Croix International