Catholic bishops in France announced that they have agreed to “a vast programme of renewal” of governance practices in response to a landmark report on clerical sex abuse.
Archbishop Éric de Moulins-Beaufort, president of the French bishops’ conference, said that the bishops had decided to “initiate a path of recognition and reparation opening for the victims the possibility of mediation and compensation”.
“All of the resolutions that we have voted on constitute a vast programme of renewal of our governance practices at the level of the dioceses and at the level of the Church in France,” the Archbishop Moulins-Beaufort said in an address broadcast live on French television.
During the week-long meeting, the bishops heard from multiple abuse victims and discussed the implications of an independent report estimating that hundreds of thousands of children were abused in the Catholic Church in France over the past 70 years.
Last week, the bishops knelt in an act of penance in Lourdes in which an image of a weeping child was unveiled and an abuse survivor shared a testimony.