Questioned for his “authoritarian” management and an affair with a woman he denies, the Archbishop of Paris has sent a letter to the Pope to hand over his office. He thus intends to “preserve the diocese”.
The Archbishop of Paris, Michel Aupetit, has just “handed over” his office “into the hands” of the Pope in a letter sent on Thursday 25 November, revealed French newspaper Le Figaro on Friday 26 November. The information was supposed to remain confidential until the pontiff's reply.
Still, it has leaked out, explains La Croix, to whom the 70-year-old archbishop, who was installed in the French capital in 2018, confided. “The word resignation is not the one I used,” he said. Resignation would mean that I am abandoning my office. In reality, I am handing it over to the Holy Father because he gave it to me,” he told the Catholic daily.
The letter of Mgr Aupetit follows revelations made by Le Point in an investigation published on Tuesday 23 November. The archbishop of Paris is accused of brutal management of his diocese, which would explain a series of recent resignations in several bodies and those of his two vicars general in recent months.
According to the weekly, the bishop made them experience “several public humiliations” and would also have shown himself to be little attentive to his priests and faithful.
Affair
Even more compromising, Le Point's investigation mentions an affair that the archbishop of Paris allegedly had with a “consenting adult” woman. It would appear from an e-mail from 2012 that he had reportedly sent by mistake to his secretary when he was vicar general of the diocese.
Bishop Aupetit vehemently denied to Le Point any sexual relationship with this person. He explained that this woman had “manifested herself to me on numerous occasions through visits, letters, etc., to such an extent that I sometimes had to take steps to put distance between us”.
He admits, however, that his “behaviour towards her may have been ambiguous, implying the existence of an intimate relationship and sexual relations between us, which I strongly refute. (…) I decided not to see her again and I informed her of this”.
Abuse
Catholic priests are bound by celibacy according to church doctrine and are meant to practise sexual abstinence.
In France, the Catholic church also received a shock last October. An independent commission then estimated that Catholic priests had abused 216,000 children since 1950.
