The Holy See has issued a formal protest against the civil court of Lorient, France after it convicted French Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet, a former top Vatican official, and the Dominican Sisters of the Holy Spirit for unlawfully expelling a nun from their community.
The court also convicted two apostolic visitors representing the Vatican in the case, which centered on Mother Marie Ferréol, the religious community’s former superior who alleged she was unjustly dismissed from her position.
Violation of religious freedom
Matteo Bruni, director of the Holy See Press Office, issued a terse statement on April 13 saying the Vatican’s Secretariat of State had sent a letter of complaint to the French Embassy to the Holy See. The statement said the Lorient court’s ruling could “raise not only questions regarding the immunity” of one of the Church’s cardinals but “since it regards internal discipline and membership in a religious institute, could also give rise to grave violations of the fundamental right of religious freedom and of the right of free association of Catholic faithful”.
In its ruling, the court said the Dominican Sisters, Cardinal Ouellet, and the two apostolic visitors expelled Ferréol “without cause”. The judges emphasized that the defendants produced no evidence to prove that the dismissal was carried out in accordance with the religious community’s statutes. They also added that Ferréol “was not able to prepare herself morally and materially to leave her community and her profession immediately, within a few hours, never to return”.
In its decision, the court said it “regrets the opacity of the canonical procedure and is surprised, in particular, that the content of the visitors’ report remained unknown both to the nun and her lawyers and to the court… Without knowing the facts, any defense was impossible.”
The court rules on civil law
A jurist close to the Church acknowledged that the Lorient court’s judgement “makes some approximations in the interpretation of canon law”. But he said the magistrates based their ruling on civil law, not Church law. “The judges do not attack either religious freedom or the association of Catholic faithful. They consider that the rights provided for in the French Civil Code were violated due to the absence of the right to defense and motivation for the decision of exclusion,” the jurist said.
This case of the Dominican Sisters of the Holy Spirit is particularly complex. The resentments and grievances of the traditionalist community, accumulated over decades, have led to particularly serious individual behaviors. But for the French judge, the abrupt dismissal of a nun after 34 years of religious life does not seem to have respected the fundamental elements of civil law.
The jurist that spoke with La Croix further explained that the Church would benefit from “improving certain internal procedures concerning visitations (i.e. internal investigations) and sanctions for religious communities.” It can no longer claim, as it did in the past, to be a “perfect society” above the law, he said.
A similar attitude was already present more than two decades ago when the French Church was first forced to deal with clergy sex abuse cases, especially in the September 2001 sentencing of Bishop Pierre Pican of Bayeux and Lisieux (Normandy). The then-66-year-old bishop was given a three-month suspended jail sentence and fined one franc in symbolic damages for failing to notify civil authorities of charges of child sexual abuse made against one of his priests.
