The broadcaster BFMTV reported that the Paris diocese had previously approached the public prosecutor. Aupetit’s lawyer declined to comment on the broadcaster.
The former Archbishop of Paris resigned in December 2021 after reports of a relationship with a woman. He had confirmed a connection to the woman when he was Vicar General, but denied it was a love affair.
Cases of abuse are becoming known again and again in the Catholic Church in France. It wasn’t until November that former Archbishop of Strasbourg Jean-Pierre Grallet and Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard confessed to the abuses of a young woman and girl respectively in the 1980s. A study presented in 2021 concluded that an estimated 216,000 children and young people have been victims of sexual abuse in the French Catholic Church since the 1950s. Including Church-operated facilities, the estimated number of casualties was 330,000.
(SDA)