A French cardinal has confessed to abusing a 14-year-old lady when he was a parish priest within the Eighties.
Jean-Pierre Ricard, who has been a cardinal since 2006, revealed the abuse in a letter on Monday and mentioned he would withdraw from his features.
“Thirty-five years ago, when I was a parish priest, I behaved in a reprehensible way with a young girl aged 14,” he mentioned.
“My behaviour has inevitably led to grave and lasting consequences for this person.”
He went on to make an apology and mentioned he can be obtainable ought to the authorized and church authorities want to converse to him.
Cardinal Ricard, 78, was ordained as a priest in 1968. He turned archbishop of Bordeaux in 2001 and retired three years in the past.
He was additionally a member of the Vatican Council for the Economy, which oversees all of the monetary actions of the Holy See.
Eleven bishops or former bishops, together with Michel Santier, a former bishop in Creteil, close to Paris, are the main focus of abuse investigations in France, Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, head of the French bishops’ convention, instructed a information convention on Monday, at which he additionally learn out Cardinal Ricard’s assertion.
The cardinal’s admission is the newest revelations to rock the Catholic Church, which has been embroiled in a worldwide sexual abuse scandal, typically involving kids, for greater than 20 years.
In France final 12 months, an unbiased investigation mentioned French clergy had sexually abused greater than 200,000 kids up to now 70 years, and its authors mentioned the Catholic Church had turned a blind eye for too lengthy.
Source: information.sky.com”