The Catholic bishops of France will maintain the confessional seal, specifies a spokesperson

The spokesperson for the bishops’ conference of France said Wednesday that the country’s Catholic leaders do not intend to compromise on the Church’s teaching that the confessional seal is sacrosanct.

“We cannot change canon law for France because it is international. A priest who today would violate the secrecy of confession would be excommunicated ”, Karine Dalle, director of communication for the conference of bishops of France (FEC), said Solène Tadié of the National Catholic Register on October 13.

“This is what Bishop Moulins-Beaufort meant last week after the publication of the Sauvé report, when he said that the seal of confession was above the laws of the Republic,” Dalle explained.

“He spoke the truth, but this truth is not audible in France to those who are not Catholics, and incomprehensible in France amid debates over so-called ‘religious separatism’.

Moulins-Beaufort, the president of the bishops’ conference, was invited to a meeting with French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin following his comments on the denominational seal in a maintenance with France Info, which caused an uproar.

After the Meet on October 12, the media suggested that the Archbishop had conceded that priests should inform the police of confessions of abuse by penitents during confession.

The reports provoked consternation among Catholics.

While French law has long recognized the Church’s strict rules on the confidentiality of the sacrament, the government is now considering changing the law for confessors, as it has done with lawyers and other lay people. professionals.

“[T]here were introduced conditions within the professional secrecy, which oblige certain professionals when there is an abuse committed on a minor of less than 15 years, to report it to the competent authorities ”, she declared.

“If a lawyer or a doctor has knowledge of abuse of a minor under the age of 15, he is required to disregard professional secrecy. This is to prevent other crimes, because pedophile crime is compulsive. “

“What the Minister of the Interior Darmanin said is that in the future, the seal of the confession could be part of this framework. It wouldn’t concern all denominational secrets, of course, but I don’t know where it will lead, ”she continued.

“But if the state tells us [that priests must report crimes against minors revealed in confession] there would be an obligation to keep the confession secret. This would mean that the priests concerned would be excommunicated by Rome, ”said Dalle.

“There will certainly be proposed adjustments, which Rome will accept or not. But no, in no case Mgr de Moulins-Beaufort did not say that the seal of the confession would be removed. He never said that.

Moulins-Beaufort made the comments after posting a watershed report on abuses in the French Catholic Church.

The final report of the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (CIASE) said about 216,000 children were abused by priests, deacons, monks or nuns from 1950 to 2020.

The independent commission, created by the French bishops in November 2018, spent 30 months investigating abuses within the Catholic Church led by Jean-Marc Sauvé, a senior official.

Among the 45 in the report recommendations was a request for the Church to reconsider the seal of confession regarding abuse.

The Vatican has firmly defended the denominational seal in response to mandatory reporting laws introduced around the world.

In June 2019, the Apostolic Penitentiary issued a Remark reaffirming the inviolability of the sacramental seal.

Dalle said: “We know that if these rules were passed, no abuser would ever confess if they knew they would be reported if they confessed to abusing a minor under the age of 15. also problematic. “

“It is the same for children, for whom confession is a space for speaking. Confession frees the child’s speech. And when the confession is over, the priest waits a moment then goes to the child and asks him if he can repeat what he said, but this time outside the confession.

“This is what the anticlericals don’t want to understand,” Dalle said, “because they don’t know all of that background.”