A French cardinal said on Monday that he had abused a 14-year-old girl several decades ago and was making himself available to authorities.
Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard said in a statement: “Thirty-five years ago, when I was a parish priest, I behaved in a reprehensible way with a young girl aged 14. My behavior has inevitably led to grave and lasting consequences for this person.”
Ricard added he was withdrawing from his functions and had spoken to the victim about the abuse.
“I renew here my request for forgiveness and also ask her entire family for forgiveness,” he said.
The statement was read at a press conference by the president of the French bishops’ conference, Archbishop Eric de Moulins-Beaufort of Reims.
The archbishop said that charges had been filed with the attorney general and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in response to Cardinal Ricard’s confession.
The 78-year-old Ricard was bishop of Bordeaux, in the southwest of France, from 2001 to 2019, Reuters reported.
The current archbishop of Bordeaux, Jean-Paul James, said: “I express my deepest sympathy to the victim concerned. And I share the pain of all those, especially in the Diocese of Bordeaux, who are hurt by these revelations.”
According to Moulins-Beaufort, nine French bishops as well as two retired bishops are currently the subject of a civil or Church investigation.
Pope Francis received French President Emmanuel Macron on Oct. 24 at the Vatican.
Before the meeting, a group of victims of sexual abuse urged Macron to directly raise the issue of whether the Church in France was too slow in reacting to a landmark investigation of sexual abuse released one year ago.
According to an independent report published in late 2021, hundreds of thousands of children were abused in the Catholic Church in France between 1950 and 2020.
The French bishops are currently meeting in Lourdes for their fall plenary session.
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The extent of corruption in the Church is physically nauseating at this stage. Is this predatory monster going to be defrocked of his cardinalatial scarlet and laicized like McCarrick? Is he going to be prosecuted by French authorities under French criminal law for his rape of this 14-year-old girl? Is His Eminence Jean-Pierre Ricard going to be publicly deputed by the appropriate Vatican authorities and the French bishops’ conference to a life of prayer and penance in a strict monastery for his “reprehensible” crimes? Since he is a Bergoglio protege, we can guess what the answers are. And how many more predatory monsters are there among the “princes of the Church”?
I pray for this priest of God and the young woman he abused when she was 14. Sin is real; repentance and remorse are possible; forgiveness and reconciliation are made possible by Christ’s sacrifice on our behalf. We don’t hold people in their sin who have asked forgiveness.
That is the catechism and the most constructive ethos from an anthropological perspective. And we have the directive from Christ, himself. But I do note that Jesus forgive nearly every type of sin while personally present on earth (of course with the injunction to go and sin no more), EXCEPT the sin of corrupting a child.
I hope that you’re not suggesting that this prelate’s sin is unforgivable.
It is if he doesn’t truly repent which, given his age, is reasonably questionable. To suddenly repent decades later? Sorry, but I don’t buy it. If he’s not genuinely repentant he’s goin to Hell.
Is he “repentant” because he got caught. If there is one victim, there’s likely more.
Our Blessed Lord Himself made it clear that it was indeed unforgivable, and that when the corrupter of children was flung into the depths of the sea with a millstone round his neck, into the depths of the sea was precisely where he would stay.
Sir, perhaps more biblical study, and less flaunting to total strangers of your purported diaconate, would be to your spiritual advantage.
I have no authority of absolution. I do wonder what Christ holds in these cases since the clue he left us in the case of leading children astray is ominous.
35 years later at age 78 after a life spent in the highest reaches of the hierarchy? I think it would be irrational to accept simpliciter his “asking forgiveness” now.
While it may seem this HIGH RANKING CHURCHMAN should be commended for coming clean, it is beyond reprehensible that he waited until he had lived out his life in a position of power and ease. He’s 78. He won’t be spending much time in prison for CHILD RAPE. He’ll be dead soon. His victim’s soul was murdered decades ago. May God have mercy on his soul.
11 Bishops in France so far including one cardinal, are being investigated for committing or hiding abuse. What does this say about character and leadership for a people who are defined by the extent to which they follow the character and the ways of doing life as Jesus demonstrated in a clear and decisive manner in how he lived and taught his disciples! I will ask this question. Most people in the modern ‘christian’ west have no idea who Jesus was and is, his character attributes etc etc and who would be the cause of this ignorance? Jesus is a threat to the Catholic Church as it has become, and a threat to the economic paradigm of modern western culture! Just as he was a threat to the power base of the Pharisees and King Herod and that is why he was set up with the Romans to be crucified! Mankind has ‘defined’ god in his own image!
This Cardinal needs to be laicized. Prison is simply not sufficient punishment.
A very different attitude to Cardinal Jean-Pierre Richard is evident in most responses here to the attitude of responses to Cardinal Pell’s series of trials and the ultimate overturning of his conviction. A different response was also evident in Cardinal Pell’s relationship with Ballarat priest serial child abuser Father Ridsdale whom Cardinal Pell lived with and later supported in a court appearance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Ridsdale#:~:text=Ridsdale%20was%20born%20at%20St,where%20he%20was%20a%20chaplain.