Priest who slapped baptism boy retires
A FRENCH priest has told of his shame at being forced into retirement for striking a crying boy aged two during his baptism.
Fr Jacques Lacroix, 89, said ‘I am finishing my ministry now’ and that ‘there is an end to everything’.
He carried out the assault during a ceremony at the Collegiate Church in Champeaux, southeast Paris, last Sunday.
In a video of the incident that has gone viral, a clearly irritated Fr Jacques is seen shouting at the boy. ‘Calm down, calm down, you must calm down,’ he says, adding, ‘be quiet’ before squeezing the boy’s face in his hands.
The priest then stares at the boy in the eyes, and slaps him on the cheek with his left hand.
The aggression prompts an immediate reaction from the boy’s horrified parents and other family members, who finally prise the child from Fr Jacques’s grip.
Denying the assault was too severe, Fr Jacques told France Info radio yesterday: ‘It was somewhere between a caress and a slap, I hoped to calm him down, I didn’t know what to do.
‘The child was screaming a lot and I had to turn his head to pour water over it. I told him to “calm down, calm down” but he was not calming down. I tried to hold him close. I just wanted him to calm down. I apologised for my clumsiness to the family. I am finishing my ministry now.’
Jean-Yves Nahmias, the Bishop of Meaux, said he had ‘taken measures so the priest is suspended from all baptism and marriage celebrations’. He said Fr Jacques had a ‘loss of coolness that can be explained but not excused’.
The bishop said: ‘Tiredness and great age clearly played a part.’
The parents have accepted the priest’s apology and were happy to see the boy baptised, the bishop said.