It is a meeting planned for a long time but which finally falls in a particularly stormy context for the Church of France, confronted with the shattering revelations on sexual abuse and a controversy around the “secret of confession”. Before meeting his Italian counterpart Mario Draghi, Jean Castex will be received this Monday morning at the Vatican by Pope Francis.
The Prime Minister’s visit was originally planned to celebrate the centenary of the restoration of diplomatic relations between France and the Holy See. But she is jostled by the news after the publication on October 5 of the conclusions of the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (Ciase), chaired by the senior official Jean-Marc Sauvé.
If Jean Castex, received in a private audience by the Sovereign Pontiff, should, according to his entourage, evoke several subjects on which France and the Vatican converge (access to vaccines for all, climate change, Lebanon …), it will be impossible to conceal the scale of the figures in the report: 216,000 minors attacked by a priest or a religious in France since the 1950s, 330,000 including lay aggressors in connection with the institutions of the Church. Especially since since his election in 2013, the Pope has made the fight against sexual abuse – “Satan’s instrument” – one of the priorities of his pontificate.
François’ “shame” and “pain”
François has already expressed his “shame” and “pain” following the Sauvé report and Jean Castex will follow “very closely the decisions that the bishops will take in the coming weeks”, according to his advisers.
But the debate was also tied around the secrecy of the confession, that the president of the Conference of the bishops of France (CEF) Emmanuel de Moulins-Beaufort had judged “superior to the laws of the Republic”, before back pedaling and of evoke a “clumsy formulation”. On this point, Jean Castex, who will meet during the morning in Rome with several dignitaries of the Holy See as well as representatives of the French ecclesiastical community, should limit the debate to national borders by recalling that “the interlocutor of the government, c ‘is the Church of France’.
The “at the same time” of the Vatican
One way not to rush the Vatican, which itself is walking on eggshells: on the one hand, a crime report form was made available to any clergyman in July 2020; on the other hand, the Holy See confirmed the primacy of the secrecy of confession, the confessor being simply encouraged to “try to convince the penitent” to alert people in a position to take legal action.