The spokeswoman for France’s bishops’ conference clarified last Wednesday that the country’s Catholic leaders do not intend to contravene the Church’s teaching on the sacrosanct nature of the confessional seal.
The clarification comes after Bishop Moulins-Beaufort, the bishops’ conference president, was invited to a meeting with France’s interior minister Gérald Darmanin to discuss the possibility of the confessional seal holding precedence over the law in the aftermath of an independent study which found that over 200,000 children were victims of sexual abuse by clergy in the French Catholic Church since 1950.
After the meeting on October 12, media reports alleged that the archbishop had conceded that priests should inform police of admissions of abuse made by penitents during Confession; a statement that provoked backlash from some Catholics.
However, Solène Tadié in the National Catholic Register dispelled these rumours in a public address, “one cannot change the canon law for France as it is international. A priest who today would violate the secrecy of Confession would be excommunicated.”
