Abuse report only first step in long reckoning for French Catholic Church

For centuries, France has been called the eldest daughter of the Catholic Church. It seems that this time is over. The French church is engulfed in a major and perhaps fatal crisis due to the publication of a devastating report on 70 years of sexual abuse by both clerics and laypeople working for Catholic organizations.

There is general agreement that the church showed some courage in 2018 by asking Jean-Marc Sauvé, a former vice president of France's administrative supreme court, to chair a committee of experts to investigate an unknown number of sexual crimes by church officials.

Yet the figures delivered by the committee after two years and a half of investigation are staggering: an estimated 330,000 abused children, mostly boys, and at least 3,000 predator clerics, most of whom are dead. (This does not include the number of lay abusers). And yet, as Antoine Garapon, one of the members of the committee, admitted in a television interview on Oct. 7, these figures are certainly underestimates — a floor and not a ceiling.

Now the main question is how the French church, which has been weakened by a massive departure of laity over the last 20 years, will face this challenge and also what the Vatican can do to put an end to a systemic crisis that has struck many other countries, including Ireland, Germany, Poland and the United States.

The first reaction of the bishops has disappointed the victims and many laity, especially younger people. Of course, the chairman of the bishops' conference, Reims Archbishop Éric de Moulins-Beaufort, has stated his shame and indignation at discovering the conclusions of the committee. He has also admitted that the conference should have acted earlier.