The procedure was opened in the fall of 2022 after the confessions of the former Archbishop of Bordeaux concerning a “reprehensible” behavior that he would have had a minor 35 years ago.
MO12345LEMONDE with AFP
The open investigation for “aggravated sexual assault” against French cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, former archbishop of Bordeaux, was classified without follow-up for prescription, learned the France-Presse agency on Saturday February 25 with the prosecution of Marseille. “The procedure was classified due to prescription,” said the public prosecutor’s prosecutor, Dominique Laurens, stressing that the alleged facts dated back to the late 1980s.
The procedure had been opened by the prosecution in early November after the confessions of Cardinal Ricard, who recognized having had a “reprehensible” behavior towards a minor thirty-five years ago, when he was in office in Marseille. The investigations aimed to “first check the exact nature of the facts denounced as well as their dating”.
During the investigation, Mgr Ricard, 78, was placed in police custody on February 2. Before the investigators, he admitted to having “embraced” a young girl, who was “in his 13-year-old memory, having hugged her and caressed over clothes” but said that “there is no of sexual intercourse, “said the Marseille prosecutor’s office on Saturday. He “asked forgiveness” from his victim, a teenager at the time of the facts, with whom he was then confronted. According to the latter, which filed a complaint during the investigation of the investigation, these facts would have repeated for three years, until the archbishop changes parish.
opening of an investigation similar to the Vatican
The declarations of this ex-architect of Bordeaux from 2001 to 2019, president of the Conference of Bishops of France (CEF) from 2001 to 2007, who had been appointed Cardinal in 2006 by Benoit XVI and who was retired since 2019 In a presbytery of the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, had caused a new earthquake in the French Catholic Church.
A few days after the revelation of this new scandal, the Vatican had then announced the opening of a preliminary investigation concerning the French Cardinal. “Following the elements that have appeared in recent days and following the declaration of Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, in order to complete the examination of what happened, it was decided to open an investigatio previa (“Preliminary investigation”), “said journalists the director of the press service of the Holy See, Matteo Bruni, November 11.
These revelations had intervened a little more than a year after the publication of the shock report of the saved commission concerning sexual abuse in the Church. The latter estimated at around 330,000 the number of victims of sexual abuse by priests, deacons, religious or people in connection with the Church of France since 1950. At its end, the episcopate had recognized its “institutional responsibility “In these violence.