2023-11-26 11:51:37
To the abuses of the Church
by Jean-François Laville
Récamier, 249 p., €20.
There is no shortage of testimonies, analysis books have revealed the scandal of the abused nuns. The interest of this new work is due in particular to the author, to the profile of a sports journalist who discovers the extent of the file. Not being from the Catholic seraglio, he takes an offbeat look, giving voice to former nuns. Some speak anonymously, others do not respond, proof, if any is needed, that the influence can last for a long time.
“When we have a very distant vision of things in the Catholic Church, their testimony seems surreal, incongruous”, writes the author. Drawing on the abundant bibliography, he also handed the microphone to the first sisters who dared to speak, the “whistleblowers” such as Michèle-France Pesneau or Anne Mardon, who confided: “There is a chasm in my life that will never be filled. »
Several well-known situations are recounted again, from the Missionary Workers to the Monastic Fraternities of Jerusalem, with a very concrete approach, without pathos: “We accepted it because we were told that religious life was a renunciation. We let ourselves be fooled until the end. We have been lied to for years”specifies Sister Camille, from the Saint-Jean community.
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If the book focuses on the revelation of abuse and the trauma of abused nuns, it extends its investigation into the reparation procedures and the material and social difficulties of sisters leaving their institute. Unfolds “a vow of poverty taken literally”.
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