Abuse Victims Fund: France’s bishops want to sell real estate

Since 1950, at least 216,000 minors have been sexually abused by Catholic priests and religious in France. Now the church wants to compensate the victims – for this it wants to sell real estate.

The Catholic Church in France wants to set up a fund to compensate victims of the abuse scandal. A commission is to sell real estate in order to raise the necessary funds, said the chairman of the French bishops’ conference, Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, at the end of the autumn plenary meeting of bishops in Lourdes.

The amount of the compensation has not yet been decided. It is about individual compensation. “Every victim is taken into account,” emphasized the archbishop. “We fall back on the reserves of the church.” Taking out a loan is also conceivable. “We do not use any donations from our supporters for this,” emphasized de Moulins-Beaufort.

Separation of state and church

If individual believers want to pay into the compensation fund, this is possible, added Dominique Blanchet, the vice-chairman of the Bishops’ Conference. But no general donations from parishioners would be used. “There is no permeability,” he emphasized. Because of the strict separation of church and state, there is no church tax in France. The congregations are financed through voluntary contributions from the faithful.

The chairman of the bishops ‘conference announced that a national authority chaired by an official from the Ministry of Justice should deal with the victims’ applications. So far, only a few thousand victims of the acts, which often took place decades ago, have reported.

“Expect to act”

The plans of the Catholic Church in France are good news for Yolande du Fayet de la Tour of the victims’ association “De La Parole aux Actes”. “We wanted to come there as victims. We expect action to take place and not just talk, like at the beginning,” she said, who is herself a victim of abuse.

Yolande du Fayet de la Tour worked with the independent commission that presented the report on sexual abuse of minors in the French Catholic Church on October 5th. According to this, around 216,000 children and young people are said to have been victims of sexual assault by priests, religious and church workers since 1950. The Catholic base reacted shaken to this finding.

Visitators should evaluate work

At their seven-day general assembly, the bishops had for the first time unanimously committed themselves to the institutional responsibility of the church for the abuse cases. De Moulins-Beaufort emphasized that the cases were not isolated, but that the abuse was systematic. The church “neither listened to nor accompanied” the victims, he said.

Working groups with the involvement of lay representatives and victims are now to investigate the causes of sexual violence in the church. In addition, suggestions should be made for accompanying the clergy in order to prevent such acts in the future, said the archbishop. The Pope was asked to send experts, so-called visitators, to evaluate the reappraisal.

With information from Linda Schildbach, ARD-Studio Paris