Michel Aupetit. File Photo. Source: Twitter
Paris: Assertions that the former archbishop of Paris had committed “sexual assault on a vulnerable person” prompted French authorities to open a preliminary investigation last month, according to prosecutors.
According to prosecutors, the investigation was launched in response to a report filed by the Paris diocese.
Earlier in 2021, when media reports of an intimate relationship with a woman in 2012 before he assumed the position, surfaced, Michel Aupetit had made an offer to step down. Though, he categorically denied the allegations.
The resignation was accepted by Pope Francis.
According to French broadcaster BFMTV, the relationship was with a vulnerable person who was under judicial protection.
According to a source close to the case, the investigators are looking into ’email exchanges’ between Aupetit and the woman, whose consent would have to be confirmed due to her mental health.
The diocese confirmed filing the report in a statement on Tuesday evening, saying it was “not in a position to verify whether the facts in question are proven or whether they constitute an offense.”
Jean Reinhart, the clergyman’s lawyer, declined to comment.
“We have no knowledge of any complaint, so we cannot comment on it,” he said.
Aupetit ‘had ambiguous behaviour with a person he was very close to,’ according to a diocese spokeswoman in 2021, adding that it was ‘not a loving relationship,’ nor sexual.
However, she stated that the offer to resign was not a “confession of guilt.”
Aupetit was archbishop during the April 2019 fire that destroyed Paris’ Notre-Dame cathedral, frequently appearing on television to express his grief and raise funds for the rebuilding effort.
According to church doctrine, Catholic priests must maintain their celibacy and are expected to abstain from sexual activity.
The French church has still not fully recovered from the publication of a devastating report by an independent commission in October 2021, which estimated that Catholic clergy had abused 216,000 children since 1950.
Since his election in 2013, the Pope has had to deal with an onslaught of allegations of sexual abuse by priests.
Prosecutors in France are also looking into Jean-Pierre Ricard, a retired bishop who was made a cardinal by Pope Benedict XVI in 2006 after publicly confessing to ‘reprehensible’ acts with a 14-year-old girl in the 1980s.
Reportedly, he was one of 11 former or serving French bishops accused of sexual violence in a shock announcement by the French Catholic Church in November.
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