French bishops approve process for adult victims of clerical sexual abuse

April 07, 2025

At the conclusion of their spring meeting, the bishops of France approved a document that establishes a process by which adult victims who allege sexual abuse by diocesan clerics can receive support and seek redress.

The apostolic letter Vos Estis Lux Mundi (2019) obliges bishops around the world to provide support to alleged victims of sexual abuse committed when the victims were minors or vulnerable persons—defined as persons “in a state of infirmity, physical or mental deficiency, or deprivation of personal liberty which, in fact, even occasionally, limits their ability to understand or to want or otherwise resist the offense.” The French bishops’ document is significant because it extends pastoral support to all adult victims of sexual abuse by diocesan clerics.

The document establishes a local diocesan listening and support process, a national office to support local offices, and a third-party mediation process. Local bishops are not obliged to have recourse to the national office, nor are they obliged to use a mediation process.

“The objective is to meet the specific needs of these individuals, distinguishing their treatment from that of minors,” the document states. “It aims to establish an appropriate practice that allows for a path of recognition and restoration in an attempt to bring peace to a person who is suffering, even in certain cases where legal recognition of responsibility is not possible.”

“The priority is to welcome, listen to, and support the complainant,” the document continues. “This requires the existence of dedicated listening units, possibly including members of diocesan reception and listening units for minors, but with specific training. These units will identify the most appropriate pathway for each complainant and support them in implementing this process: referral to civil justice, canonical justice, gestures of recognition and reparation, meeting with the bishop, and spiritual expectations.”

The diocesan listening and support process has four steps:

• “listening to the request the person makes to the diocese and the expectations they express”
• “supporting the individual in their eventual approach to state and/or canonical justice”
• “identifying the most appropriate path for the victim in order to work with them to find the best possible solutions to acknowledge the suffering caused by the event”
• “when it seems necessary and beneficial, particularly in the event of disagreement over the responses provided, mediation, a legal and secure mechanism, can be offered.”

The French bishops also a brief message--entitled “Résolument, continuons à servir la vérité!” [Resolutely, let us continue to serve the truth!]—to be read or distributed in all parishes.

Encouraging victims to report abuse to law enforcement and to avail themselves of local listening centers, the bishops said, “Let us reiterate it forcefully and in the words of Christ Jesus himself: it is the truth that sets us free (cf. John 8:32) and opens up paths of healing.”

In his closing address at the bishops’ meeting, Archbishop Éric de Moulins-Beaufort of Reims reflected on his six-year tenure as president of the episcopal conference. Cardinal Jean-Marc Aveline of Marseille was elected to succeed him; Archbishop Moulins-Beaufort, in turn, will become president of the bishops’ doctrinal commission.

In his closing address, Archbishop Moulins-Beaufort said that the media had identified him with the fight against sexual abuse, but “if it had been possible to choose, I would have preferred to be more involved in our work on Laudato Sì,’“ the Pope’s 2015 encyclical on care for our common home.

“With a little reflection, these are not two different battles,” he continued. “Because ecology is not first and foremost a matter of the environment, the preservation of nature, the fight against pollution. My deep conviction is that the time has come for humanity to rethink its relationship with all beings, and this means for each of us: our relationship with ourselves, with other humans, with non-human beings, with technology too, and even more so with God.”

He added:

It is a question of an immense conversion: to free ourselves from any relationship of predation and domination, even if inhabited or dressed in good intentions and great feelings; to advance resolutely in an authority whose sole effect is to make others grow ... For Jesus came to disarm all violence, in us and in our history, not by a stronger force or constraint, but by the attraction of love, by the reversal that the gift of self can cause in us.

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