Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard issued a written statement on Monday after a report issued last year revealed a “massive phenomenon” of child sex abusers operating for decades in the French Catholic Church. “Thirty-five years ago, when I was a priest, I behaved in a reprehensible way with a young girl of 14,” said Ricard. “My conduct has inevitably caused serious and lasting consequences for this person.” Ricard, 78, was archbishop of Bordeaux in southwestern France until he retired from that post in 2019 to serve in his diocese of Digne-les-Bains in the south of the country. In the 1980s he was a priest in the archdiocese of Marseilles. The announcement was made at a press conference by the president of the French bishops’ conference, Archbishop Éric de Moulins-Beaufort. Moulins-Beaufort said 11 bishops and former bishops, including Ricard, had been accused of sexual abuse in various cases investigated by French justice or church authorities. Ricard said he spoke to the victim and asked for her forgiveness, without specifying when. He said he was also asking for forgiveness “to everyone I hurt” through his statement. He did not elaborate on that. At a time when the French Catholic Church had just begun paying financial compensation to victims of child sexual abuse, Ricard said he had decided “no longer to remain silent about [his] state’ and that he was available for the justice of the land and for the ecclesiastical authorities. The wide-ranging study published last year by an independent commission estimated that 330,000 children were sexually abused over 70 years by priests or other figures associated with the church in France. The tally included about 216,000 people who were abused by priests and other clergy and the rest by people in affiliated institutions, such as scout leaders and camp counselors. The estimates were based on wider research by France’s National Institute of Health and Medical Research on child sexual abuse. The report described a “systemic” cover-up by church officials and urged the French Catholic Church to respect the rule of law in France.
