According to BFMTV, the former archbishop would have maintained an affair with a vulnerable person subject to a judicial protection measure.
It is, according to a source familiar with the matter, “exchanges of emails” between the religious and this woman, whose apparent consent will have to be confirmed with regard to her mental health. “We have absolutely no knowledge of a complaint, so we cannot give any indication on this subject”, declared Me Jean Reinhart, lawyer for Michel Aupetit.
In a press release received on Tuesday evening, the diocese of Paris “confirms that it has sent a report and specifies – as it indicated to the Paris prosecutor’s office – that it is not in a position to verify whether the facts in question are proven, nor whether they constitute an offence”. “The report – which did not include the qualification of sexual assault – was carried out” so that “all the necessary verifications can be carried out by the courts, in accordance with the protocol signed in 2019 between the diocese and the Paris prosecutor’s office” , adds the diocese.
Against marriage for all and abortion
Fin novembre 2021, Mgr Aupetit presented his resignation to Pope Francis, who immediately accepted it.
Archbishop Aupetit had been at the head of the Archdiocese of Paris since December 2017. Entering the priesthood late – he was ordained at the age of 44 following having practiced medicine for eleven years -, Michel Aupetit, 71, has exercised various ministries of vicar, parish priest and chaplain to the youth, before being appointed bishop. He was auxiliary bishop of Paris in 2013, then inherited a diocese by right, that of Nanterre for a little over three years.
The archbishop, who had to manage the fire of Notre-Dame de Paris in 2019, is known for his strict positions on the family, he notably regularly supported the “marches for life” hostile to the voluntary interruption of pregnancy. The religious was also challenged for his management of human resources in the diocese.
He also had trouble with homosexuals in 2012 during the debates on “marriage for all”. Some have also criticized him for his relative silence on the issue of pedocrime, following the shock wave created by the publication in early October 2021 of the report of the commission chaired by Jean-Marc Sauvé which showed the extent of the phenomenon in the Catholic Church in France since the 1950s.
A total of eight former bishops have or have had cases in civil or Church justice “for sexual abuse” (including Mgr Ricard and Bishop Santier), said Eric de Moulins Beaufort, president of the episcopate, in November.
