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. Read more
Over the weekend, I read the almost 900-page report of the Investigation which L’Arche had mandated to investigate the allegations of abuse of Jean Vanier and Thomas Philippe. I am impressed by the courage of L’Arche International in mandating this report and in the expertise, and thorough investigation carried out by the people who made Read more
The Catholic Church in France is facing demands from its religious orders to take responsibility for the evidence of sexual, spiritual, and psychological abuse in L’Arche, a former lay community for people with developmental disabilities. A 437-page report, published after a two-year investigation, exposes the shocking details of how L’Arche’s founder, Jean Vanier (pictured), created Read more
An independent commission appointed by L’Arche International has published a new report confirming that the founder of L’Arche, Jean Vanier, sexually exploited and abused women. The report provides evidence that the sexual exploitation of women was the primary motivation for Vanier’s founding of the organisation. Jean Vanier, who founded the organisation in 1964, has been Read more
Ireland’s former president Mary McAleese has written to the Pope saying she’ll leave the the Catholic Church if it is found the Vatican “failed to act to protect members of the L’Arche community” from the community’s founder Jean Vanier. In her letter to the pope (which she published on her personal website on 26 February) Read more
In one of my earliest memories, my father is warning me about a famous man, “Remember, he still puts his pants on one leg at a time.” I remembered this warning when I heard about the fall of another famous icon, Brother Jean Vanier, the revered founder of L’Arche, an ecumenical community where disabled and Read more
We continue to hear of incidents that more than suggest that Catholics – and, in particular, their bishops – have learned very little from the clergy sexual abuse crisis. This is quite alarming and depressing because the Church in North America has been dealing with issues regarding priests who abuse children and teenagers for at Read more
I keep a photo of Jean Vanier on my desk. It is painful to look at today. I’ve written almost completely uncritically about the founder of L’Arche several times at America: I called him a “revered spiritual master and prophetic voice” whose messages “always bear repeating” in a review of his last book; I wrote Read more
L’Arche founder Jean Vanier has been accused of sexual misconduct. The allegations follow months of investigation into the man praised by popes and politicians for his humanitarian work in establishing a global network of institutions serving adults with physical and intellectual disabilities. The accusations involve six women of various “ages, geographic origin and status – Read more
Jean Vanier who died earlier this year features a documentary being screened in New Zealand this month. Summer in the Forest Summer is a beautiful and moving study of this extraordinary man and the organisation he founded. Vanier founded L’Arche, a community based outside of Paris for individuals with developmental disabilities, in the 1960s. His goal Read more