Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, one of the highest-ranking bishops of France’s Catholic Church, said Monday that he abused a 14-year-old girl 35 years ago and is retiring from his religious duties. The move comes after a report issued last year revealed a large number of cases of child sexual abuse 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,” Ricard said in a written statement. “My conduct has inevitably caused serious and lasting consequences for this individual,” he said. 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 on Monday at a press conference by the president of the French bishops’ conference, Archbishop Eric de Moulin-Beaufort. Moulin-Beaufort said a total of 11 bishops and former bishops, including Ricard, have been the target of accusations 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 has just started paying financial compensation to victims of child sexual abuse, Ricard said he decided “not to be silent about his situation any longer” and was available to the country’s justice and church authorities. The wide-ranging study released last year by an independent commission estimated that some 330,000 children were sexually abused over 70 years by priests or other church-related figures in France. The tally included about 216,000 people who were abused by priests and other clergy, and the rest by church figures such as scout leaders and camp counselors. The estimates were based on a larger survey 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.
