French clerical abuse report puts spotlight on confession

PARIS >> The absolute secrecy of confession is central to the Roman Catholic faith. What is said in confession is between a penitent and God, the priest a mediator. Any priest who breaks that seal can face excommunication under church laws that the Vatican places above all others.

But what happens when what is confessed is a violation of the laws of the state?

It is an issue that has vexed attempts to address the sexual abuse cases that have roiled the church in any number of countries, but one that has emerged as especially charged in France, where the state long ago stripped the Catholic Church of its preeminence. A devastating church-ordered report issued in October by an independent commission on sexual abuse inside the French Catholic Church found that the sacrament of confession, in rare instances, had been used to cover up abuse cases.

Some victims wishing to report past abuses or expose active abusive priests were told to speak about it during confession, effectively suppressing their revelations and turning the sacrament into a “weapon of silence,” said Laëtitia Atlani-Duault, a member of the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church, which wrote the report.

“The fact that this information was heard during confession would exempt the church from submitting itself to the laws of the republic,” she said.

The report recommended that priests who heard of abuse during confession should be required to report evidence to state authorities so that abusers “would no longer feel protected by church leaders,” said Atlani-Duault, an anthropologist who teaches at IRD-University of Paris and Columbia University.

Even so, the morning after the release of the report, …ric de Moulins-Beaufort, the archbishop of Reims and the president of the Bishops’ Conference of France, reaffirmed the Vatican’s position on the absolute secrecy of confession, declaring church law “superior to the laws of the republic.”

The comment drew a sharp rebuke from the French government. Gérald Darmanin, the interior minister, quickly summoned the archbishop — an act that was laden with symbolism that angered some Catholic officials.

After a meeting at the minister’s office, the archbishop spoke in a statement of “reconciling the nature of confession and the need to protect children” and apologized for his “clumsy wording.”

But he did not retreat from the church’s stance on the secrecy of confession. Darmanin reiterated the government’s position that priests should report child abuse, although he stopped short of declaring that they were legally bound to do so.

Such disagreements over the secrecy of confession have erupted in a number of countries that went through a reckoning of abuse in their churches, but the debates remain mostly unresolved. Under pressure, the Vatican in recent years has lifted or eased some of its confidentiality policies, but it has remained steadfast on confession.

In Australia, a royal commission recommended in 2017 that priests who hear about sexual abuse in the confessional be required to report it and several states have passed laws to that effect, but church authorities have refused to comply.

But the issue has particular resonance in France, which underwent a long and contentious separation of church and state.

“We can tell that the church is not ready to revisit this dogma,” Jean Castex, France’s prime minister, told reporters last month during a visit with Pope Francis at the Vatican, according to French media. “But we must find ways of reconciling it with criminal law and the rights of victims.”