PARIS, France – French authorities final month opened a preliminary inquiry into allegations that the previous archbishop of Paris had dedicated “sexual assault on a vulnerable person”, prosecutors stated on Tuesday.
The probe was opened primarily based on a report filed by the diocese of Paris, they stated.
Michel Aupetit provided to resign in late 2021 following media reviews of an intimate relationship with a lady in 2012 earlier than he took on the submit, allegations he has categorically denied. Pope Francis accepted the resignation.
French broadcaster BFMTV reported that the connection was with a weak individual below judicial safety.
A supply near the case advised AFP the probe was trying into “email exchanges” between Aupetit and the lady, whose consent must be confirmed in view of her psychological well being.
The clergyman’s lawyer Jean Reinhart refused to remark.
“We have absolutely no knowledge of a complaint, so we cannot comment on the subject,” he stated.
A diocese spokeswoman in 2021 stated Aupetit “had ambiguous behaviour with a person he was very close to”, including that it was “not a loving relationship”, nor sexual.
But she stated the supply to step down was “not a confession of guilt”.
Aupetit was archbishop through the April 2019 hearth that ravaged the Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris, commonly showing on tv to precise anguish over the catastrophe and rally funds for the rebuilding effort.
Catholic clergymen are certain to celibacy below church doctrine and are supposed to observe sexual abstinence.
The French church remains to be reeling from the publication in October 2021 of a devastating report by an impartial fee, which estimated that Catholic clergy had abused 216,000 youngsters since 1950.
The pope has needed to cope with an avalanche of allegations of sexual abuse by clergymen since being elected in 2013.
French prosecutors are additionally investigating Jean-Pierre Ricard, a retired bishop made a cardinal by pope Benedict XVI in 2006, after he confessed publicly to “reprehensible” acts with a 14-year-old lady within the Eighties.
He was one among 11 former or serving French bishops accused of sexual violence in a shock announcement by the French Catholic Church in November. — Agence France-Presse
