On Tuesday, October 5, 2021, the independent committee, the so-called Sauve Committee, after three years of work, published the result of its research (485 pages plus 2,500 pages in the annexes), (Ciase) which is now available to everyone, and concerns the sexual abuse within the catholic church.
The facts are overwhelming: from 1950 to 2020, 330,000 minors were sexually abused, of which 216,000 by metropolitan or ordained priests, but also by nuns or consecrated women, while the rest by lay members of the Catholic Church.
In other words, 10% of French adults (5.5 million people) have been sexually abused in one way or another when they were minors. However, it is painful for the Catholic Church to prove that after the family, kin and friendly environment it is second in percentages in terms of abuse.
80% of the victims are boys aged 10 to 13 years. The clergy involved are 2900 to 3,200, ie 2.5% to 2.8% of the clergy (in Germany, Iceland, United States, Australia) this percentage ranges between 4.4% and 7.5%.
The committee chairman Jean-Marc Soave himself, a devout Catholic himself, said the committee was confronted, literally face to face, with the mystery of evil. The above figures show, beyond any doubt, that this evil is systemic, that it was nurtured and concealed by the same ecclesiastical reality (clericalism, secrecy, the extreme sanctification of the clergyman, the obligatory celibacy of the clergy).
The people who committed these Crimes believed that they were above others, above the law, untouched in their sanctity. But it would be very unfair for the Sauve Commission and its conclusion to be left to the numbers.
The Catholic Church around the world has been severely injured by what came to light about sexual abuse. The soave finding shows in which direction things should change radically in the Catholic Church. And this direction is in a word: the synod. And today’s French Catholics really want the change of church to move in this direction, some more clearly and some more confused.
It is no coincidence that the Catholic Church officially began in Rome, on October 9-10, 2021, the debate on the synod, which will lead to the Grand Synod in October 2013 in the same city.
Synod means decisive participation in the life of the church of all laity, men and women, which is based precisely on the baptismal equality of the faithful. Let the popular French think, in order to take courage in their effort, how the truth about the abuse of minors came to light: because they spoke for themselves. Without his voice, the institutional church would continue to cover up crimes.
Synod not only means another way of governing, but also another mentality, another way of dealing, it means a church capable of listening – the voice of the victims, first of all – and serving, following the example of Christ. Moreover, the synod, which is certainly not a cloth, is tantamount to the emancipation and autonomy of the people of democratic societies to whom the church addresses its eternal message. The church is the whole of the baptized.
