It raged for “several decades”, in particular “between 1998 and 2012”. The Benedictines of the Sacred Heart of Montmartre have officially recognized that a “system of influence, with serious and lasting consequences” had existed within their congregation, an official said on Wednesday. This system is described in an “official declaration” drawn up jointly by “the current sisters and eleven former sisters who have left the institute”, a “quite rare step”, declared Sister Marie Jérémie, one of the general councilors of the congregation.
In the statement, published last week on the congregation’s website, the sisters, who have worked together on a “re-reading of the institute’s past,” say that this system had been “implemented over several decades by the ‘authority of the time’. Before 1998, “there were already dysfunctions, but things became particularly complex between 1998 and 2012”, according to Sister Marie Jérémie.
“Many departures of sisters”
It was both “spiritual and conscience abuse, abuse of power and authority, separation of the sisters from their family and their spiritual referent, moral and physical violence, threats, systematized lies, slander, climate of fear and manipulation, humiliation, deprivation of freedom, lack of vocational discernment…”, lists the declaration.
“These abuses caused numerous departures of sisters, in too often painful and difficult conditions, the authority of the time (…) having (…) ostracized them”, add the signatories of the text. It is not possible to know the exact number of victims, according to Sister Marie Jérémie, who further specified that it was a question of “past abuses” and that a “reform of the institute had begun to be implemented from 2012.
A “commission” to analyze the “drifts”
The Benedictine sisters, who are 95 today in France – including 10 at the Sacré-Coeur in Montmartre – and the 11 “outings” are demanding, “in the coming months”, the establishment of “an independent and multidisciplinary commission , in order (…) to analyze all the abuses that have taken place as well as to consider the contours of a just reparation”.
In addition, in the statement, the current leaders of the institute ask “forgiveness to all those who have been victims of these abuses, to their families and loved ones”.