Why the probe on sexual violence limited itself to 350 out of 1,491 priests active at Foreign Missions during the period under consideration?
Homophobia, more so among young priests, is a factor to explain sexual violence at the Foreign Missions.
By Camille Rio*
Despite the wide media coverage of the Foreign Missions report on sexual abuse in its ranks, it has had minor impact on public opinion, both in society and in the Roman Catholic Church of France, and more significantly within the Foreign Missions religious order.
An explanation could be that the current events, going from the reopening of Notre-Dame Cathedral to Pope Francis’s visit to Corsica make it hard to look at the report.
A careful reading of the report, however, raises a number of fundamental questions, about the investigation itself, its sponsors, also its method, and the facts reported.
The full report in English is available here at the Foreign Missions’ website and here at Scribd. The French edition of the report is available here at the order’s website and here at Scribd.
Origin of the probe
In several interviews following the various cases that have shaken the Foreign Missions order for the last two years, the current superior general reported having used an independent firm to probe cases of sexual violence within the order.
Allegedly, he did so by virtue of a formal mandate given by the 2022 order’s general assembly, which takes place every six years. However, in the ten or so lines that mention these subjects in the records of the general assembly, the delegates only expressed their wish to “ask for the memories of the colleagues” on the subject. It is, therefore, false to claim any mandate from this assembly to take the issue to an external firm. The report also denies the existence of this mandate (p.7).
The history of how the order hired the GCPS Consulting firm also raises questions: if the decision to call on the services of GCPS is said to have been made in February 2023, the public announcement of the probe came on May 2nd, 2023 (interview with Father Vincent Sénéchal in the weekly magazine Famille Chrétienne), just a few weeks after Father Aymeric de Salvert was taken into custody (April 5th, 2023).
GCPS and the Foreign Missions leaders formally launched the probe on May 11th and 12th, 2023, but will not really start until September of the same year, suggesting a certain haste in concluding the contract with the GCPS consulting firm, caused by the fact that De Salvert was already under police custody and the various journalistic investigations that were to be concluded a few weeks later.
This haste would be less a result of a voluntary commitment on the Foreign Mission’s leadership than a communication strategy and a hasty damage control policy.
The question of the mandate, in a religious order, raises questions, especially regarding the cost of such a probe, which was only known to the leadership of the order. Said leaders refused to answer for it before the colleagues gathered during the presentation of the probe back in November 2024.
It is a regrettable to keep this information from the rest of the order, as the financial investment for a probe of this scale also reveals the reasons behind the strategy of its sponsors.
Moreover, one can estimate the costs: three, four, or five (?) expert consultants paid by a flat rate per day, over a period of fifteen months, on top of travel expenses, translation services, and so forth. The cost is obviously extremely high. Also, one needs to raise questions about the costly archival research for contemporary files already known by the leadership of the Foreign Missions.
It would also be appropriate to question the sums invested over the past two years in connection with these matters: legal experts, lawyers, crisis management firm, and so forth, which, to my knowledge, have never been the subject of debate in the various bodies of the Foreign Missions or of any report to its members.
Finally, it is necessary to point out that in terms of auditing, there have been many precedents since 2016. Previous leaders of the Foreign Missions order have been requesting numerous audits in the areas of finance, security, labor law, but also penal, and criminal matters from firms such as (KPMG, KAOLIN, DELSOL, and Maître Pujos, among others. They are cited as examples of how the Foreign Missions leaders have used in the recent past made extensive use of costly audits without achieving any meaningful goals.
One fears, in light of the disastrous record of the last ten years highlighted by this latest report, that the leaders of the order have used the previous audits (also expensive) more for the purposes of media shock and awe and to legally protect themselves than for the purposes of achieving real progress in terms of protection.
Dissemination of the report
While the report was the subject of postings on the Foreign Missions social media accounts at Facebook at what used to be Twitter, and was the subject of news on their website, it is surprising that its publication was not relayed by the order’s press agency Adextra (formerly Églises d’ Asie).
Something similar can be said of the networks of volunteers linked to the order, and also on the communication networks of the Roman Catholic Church at large in countries in Asia and the Indian Ocean with dioceses still run by the Foreign Missions order, as in the case of Port-Bergé, Madagascar, and the apostolic vicariate of Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
Georges Varkey Puthiyakulangara, originally born in Endoor, India, in 1953, is the bishop of the diocese of Port-Bergé, Madagascar, where he was first appointed as coadjutor bishop in 2008, and later became head in 2013.
Olivier Michel Marie Schmitthaeusler, a French national, born in Strasbourg in 1970, he has been the vicar apostolic or bishop of Phnom-Penh, Cambodia, since 2009, where he was first appointed as coadjutor and later as titular of the see one year later.
That attitude regarding the Foreign Missions report stands in contrast with the stated desire to open up information, to promote “free speech,” particularly in those countries in Asia and the Indian Ocean.
Publicity of the probe and calls for testimonies
While the dissemination of the probe’s conclusions suffers from its understanding of confidentiality, the original calling for testimonies and how they were gathered is even more worrying.
Although the report repeatedly talks about “calls for testimonies” “translated into the different languages of the mission countries”, there is no evidence of such callings translated into all those languages.
And all the witnesses consulted in Thailand claim to have never heard of this call for testimonies, more so in the region most affected by cases of clergy sexual abuse, the so-called Karen country.
It is necessary to raise questions about how the leaders of the order made these callings for testimonies. What networks, in what media, and to what extent were used to publicize the probe and to call for testimonies in the mission countries?
The authors of the report note (p. 24 of the English-speaking report, 26 of the French-speaking) that nobody offered his or her testimony because of their call for testimonies. Could it be that this is simply because there was little or no actual work to get those testimonies?
On the method
The report details the scope of the audit, which first seeks to analyze the situation of the Foreign Missions order from the perspective of the most recent safeguarding standards, and finally to identify, as far as possible, reports of sexual violence within the order.
The authors do their best to avoid any attempt at carrying a research or journalistic type of inquiry, to raise questions about the responsibilities or to precisely query about the different protection and immunity mechanisms, barely touched upon in the report.
This is a very regrettable omission, especially given the contemporary nature of a very significant number of the cases in this report. The inability, at this time, of all the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church (nunciatures, the assembly of religious of France, the French Conference of Bishops, the Roman curia, and the Church tribunals) to shed light on these recent cases calls to launch a detailed historical probe, or at least an apostolic visitation and a canonical probe.
Will an investigation of this nature ever take place? It is hard to believe it will happen and, in any case, it is necessary to regret the waste of money and resources when this "independent" probe had all the means and power to at least offer a diagnosis that is still lacking.
The harsh light shed on the last two leaders of the Foreign Mission order by recent journalistic investigations clearly indicates, however, that the problem lies less in the past than in the future of the order, with decisions taken in terms of recruitment or appointments having repercussions twenty or thirty years apart. There is no guarantee that the proposals for improving safeguarding protocols will be enough to eliminate the effects of previous decisions.
We also wonder about certain modesty shown by investigators in their probe in mission countries: “[the investigators] have also sometimes chosen not to address the issue of sexual violence directly through consultations with these communities” (p. 13 of the French version, p. 12 of the English-speaking report). Why, then, going to these countries, if not to discuss these issues?
As for the triangulation method used to identify the cases, consisting of first identifying them in the minutes of the weekly meetings of the permanent council (superior general and his council), one may wonder: does not the report itself mention (p.55 of the French report, 50 of the English language edition) reports made before this council that are not found in the minutes?
Either the witnesses are lying, or someone blacked out the minutes, or, more likely, the members of the councils have mutually agreed not to keep a record of these reports, which would then force us to consider them as accomplices.
One can also easily imagine that in similar matters the superior general and his vicar general (two of whom are themselves implicated nowadays) preferred to settle these cases on their own, without informing their council.
Why not approaching the research by going through the personal files of the 1,491 active priests during this period? Why restricting the probe to only 350 files, when the personal files of the Foreign Missions priests, are all gathered at the order’s archive on Du Bac Street, are easily accessible, and this collection is ideally suited to carry methodical searches?
Why have they not asked any of the priests of the so-called “diaspora,” who are defined as those who “still belong to the order but are either retired or incardinated in France and elsewhere” (p.12 of the French-speaking version and 11 of the English-speaking version)?
Having returned from their missions, for several reasons and practicing in France, these priests are key witness to alert on the dysfunctions that they may have observed. In recent years, the number of members of the Foreign Missions (excluding retirees) practicing outside the mission territories has reached a very high proportion, which is questionable, to say the least, not to mention the recent or current departures.
Visits to mission countries
While several colleagues confirm the arrival of GCPS investigators in several mission countries, nevertheless questions emerge about the scope of the probe in these countries. Thus, if they did indeed go to Bangkok, Thailand no one has heard of a visit to the Karen country, which is the most seriously affected by cases of clerical pedophilia.
One wonders about the desire for exhaustiveness of a probe ignoring the most serious cases, or even victims and witnesses who would have willingly informed about cases already known in news reports, and their disastrous management by the current leaders of the order.
A persistent vagueness
The vocabulary used often maintains a certain vagueness about dates (“these last years”), responsibilities and identification of witnesses (“some priests”), situations (“it seems that”). Said vagueness prevents a faithful retracing of a history of cases and progress in safeguarding, and it does not fit well with the rigor expected of a probe.
The way the report sets its periods is related to the terms of office of the superiors and vicars general at the Foreign Missions: why not mention the responsibilities during these periods, responsibilities which are in the public record and not confidential?
To set the record, Table 1 shows the terms of office of the order’s leader from 2004 onwards, as to facilitate comparisons with the cases reported on these periods.
A similar imprecision exists as far as how figures and data appear in the inventory of incidents. This vagueness is understandable in view of the difficult estimation of cases, but the mix maintained between estimation of reports, victims and aggressors, proven cases, and reports, as well as the changing numbers over very disparate periods, prevents any putting into perspective of these figures, and to develop a serious ratio of cases of sexual violence within the Foreign Missions during the period studied.
The proposed figure of three percent of predator clergy suffers from such reservations that it seems imprudent to quote it as is. However, this is the raw information put forward in the press release and statements from the Foreign Missions and which would like to include this estimate in the average defined by the CIASE probe, the so-called Sauvé Report (2.5-2.8 percent). Despite the Foreign Missions attempt to set that figure, for certain periods the ratio in that order is much higher.
The figures for reports, incidents, and alleged attackers
The very long period studied (74 years), and the great disparity in figures and periods, prevents a homogeneous understanding of what has happened. It also allows to smooth out the figures, to the point that one comes to wonder if this is not intentional, as to manipulate them. Is it reasonable in fact to compare the early 1950s, when there were more than 1,000 missionaries, with the 2010s, when the order had less than 200 missionaries?
Moreover, one must keep in mind that, recently, the number of missionaries under 75 years old who are still active, is even lower, 60 priests, at most.
The Foreign Missions report lacks statistical data of the evolution of the order’s numbers. If we take the number of those leaving the order, we will note a spectacular decline, leaving the order reduced to next to nothing.
When one takes the departures into consideration, a worrying ratio of aggressor priests emerges. To illustrate this point it is necessary to take into consideration that there were 561 departures on mission between 1946 and 1975, while only 61 happened between 1976 and 2019. When one goes down to specific years one finds, as examples, 15 departures on mission in 1966; eight in 1970, none each year between 1978 and 1984; one to two per year between 1984 and 2010, and barely more since 2010.
Based on the very fragmentary statistical data in this report, and focusing on the contemporary period, it is a reasonable estimate more than a share of potential aggressors of ten percent over the last thirty years, if not 15 for the last few years. That is an enormous and absolutely unprecedented figure that in itself would immediately require a formal probe by the Roman Catholic Church’s hierarchy and perhaps one from the civil and police authorities.
At this point it would be interesting to find out what would the amateur statisticians of the Catholic Academy of France say. What would they, who were so willing to criticize the results of the Sauvé Report (available here in English at Scribd), say after looking at this report and its odd statistical biases?
The peak noted over the period 1971-1980, very finely analyzed by the report, is not without interest: it singularly illuminates the modesty of the generation of former members of the order, who have been very silent in recent years on these questions, very uncomfortable to address sexual issues, which is also explained by the reporting in the report of numerous cases of cohabitation in the missions, a situation notorious among clergy in the Foreign Missions order.
The places
The predominance of reports from France (19), in a missionary order where the majority of its members are supposed to be working on a mission, forces two types of questions.
On the one hand, if we exclude cases of abuse possibly committed during leave (but which would reveal cases that were otherwise numerous on a mission) or by missionaries recalled to work in mainland France, the coincidence of these numerous reports with the places of power and government of the society raises the question of the link between sexual abuse and power within the Foreign Missions order (how much more so among leaders who will pursue a brilliant ecclesiastical career within the Roman Catholic Church in France), and of a possible systemic nature of abuse within the order.
Incidentally, the statements in recent months by the current Superior General, Father Vincent Sénéchal saying «a few isolated cases do not make a system» seem to be largely undermined by this report, both by the figures and the outcomes of their approach to safeguarding.
It is a «system» overflowing the Foreign Missions order to affect the Roman Catholic Church in France and the Roman institutions: nunciatures, and both the Dicastery for the Evangelization (formerly the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples) and the Dicastery for Bishops.
In addition to abuse, sexual and of the power mechanisms, it would finally be appropriate to question the issue of financial abuse, a sea serpent within the order, dismissed by the report, despite the cases of it reported to the investigators.
Thailand, with ten reports, raises questions about the number of reports accepted. I personally reported to investigators no less than three alleged cases (duly documented) of assaults on minors, for my mission territory alone, which augurs a much larger number for the entire country.
Finally, Cambodia with seven cases raises questions about the contemporaneity of the instances reported: the Catholic Church in Cambodia completely disappeared during the Khmer Rouge period (1975-1997), its rebirth depends on the increased investment of the Foreign Missions over the last thirty years, and it is one of the last Asian churches still led by the order.
Also, the absence, or the very small number of reports for countries that had very many missionaries. As one possible example, one must note that there are no reports from the People’s Republic of China (see the graph above), a country that the order’s website designates as part of their “Mission Countries”, as the map after this paragraph, available here at their website, describes. That forces to raise questions about the many holes in the racket, and about the existence or not of calls for testimonies distributed in these regions.
Some elements on the audit of the order’s safeguarding policies
Despite its cautious and diplomatic wording, the report is, in short, a scathing disavowal of how the order does as far as safeguarding is concerned. That is even more clear for the terms of office of Georges Colomb (2010-2016) but especially of Gilles Reithinger (2016-2021), as superior generals of the order.
Thus, we learn that until 2021, only one report reached the courts. Again, this single report concerned a volunteer, and not a priest. A cruel observation, which absolutely denies the statements of Gilles Reithinger, who affirmed that the order systematically reported each case found to the civil justice system and to the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy.
The Audit Report also makes clear that, up until today, no report reached the various justice systems of the mission countries, despite clear cut legislation setting the duty to file formal reports, and in total contradiction with the global Roman Catholic Church’s standards.
If the audit concerning the recent mandate of Vincent Sénéchal (interim in 2021, superior since 2022) seems to indicate a change in practice, it fails to mention that Sénéchal had been the vicar general of his predecessor for five years, and that as such he shared with the responsibility of major superior (and before that superior of the order at Cambodia), and the information reserved for the superior general.
The damning report on this period makes impossible to absolve Sénéchal, the current superior general as well as certain members of the current council—including those sitting on the new “Council for the Evaluation of Alerts and Allegations”—who had leadership positions previously.
Painting Vincent Sénéchal as some sort of “white knight” of the safeguarding protocols at the order, determined to radically change practices in which he himself collaborated, would be an exaggeration.
If several reports have indeed been made to the civil or canonical courts, they have been made under the combined pressure of journalistic investigations, an increasingly vigilant Roman Catholic public opinion after the Sauvé Report, and victims and witnesses who have come forward, rather than proactive action in these matters from the order.
Any chance of a proactive action has been denied by the atmosphere of secrecy and omerta that still surrounds the issue of sexual violence at the Foreign Missions order.
«Reactions marked by homophobia»
In addition to the various resistances among priests at the Foreign Missions to their own probe, cited here and there in the report, the investigators also talk about reactions marked by homophobia in the explanations that several priests in the order offer as a diagnosis of the prevalence of sexual violence in their organization.
This is paradoxical, since it is precisely the existence of a homophobic environment that has allowed and partly concealed sexual violence in the so-called Mother House in the 2010s. The persistence of this environment, especially among young priests, should not be underestimated, since it is a factor in the mechanisms allowing violence to persist in the recent past.
The «Charter»
Reading this report, the only normative document specifically dedicated to safeguarding at the Foreign Missions order is the Charter of ethics and pastoral conduct, cited at different points.
Adopted back in 2016, the charter (available here at the order's website and here at Scribd, in both cases only in French) was not communicated to the order’s priests until 2021 (p.19), five years later (?!). It is amusing to recall that this charter, which is rendered as the sole proof of the order’s firm commitment to a safer environment, is a document closely related to the Code of pastoral conduct of the archdiocese of Strasbourg (available here at that archdiocese website and here at Scribd, in both cases only in French) and the practical fact sheets on the website of the same diocese (when the diocese talks about the “archbishop” the order talks about the “superior general”).
Although the archdiocese of Strasbourg is not under the control of the Foreign Missions order, there are at least six bishops who, at different points in the history of both the diocese and the order, have had some association.
It is not possible to go into details about these links. Suffice to say that Gilles Lucien Paul Reithinger retains the title of auxiliary bishop emeritus of that diocese, despite his forced resignation in February 2024.
This resignation is significant because he was only 51 years old, so it is possible to assume that he did something wrong in the eyes of Rome. Before being auxiliary bishop there, he had been, as Table 1 proves, superior general of the order of Foreign Missions from 2016 to 2021.
In copying its Charter from the archdiocese’s Code, the order renders its normative document completely unsuitable and useless when cases arise in mission countries, where there are competing jurisdictions between the order and the local diocese.
It would be funny if the consequences were not so serious. Today, it is less a question of revising the order’s Charter (as suggested at p. 19 of the report in both versions) than of drafting a new protocol, truly dedicated to the kind of issues happening at the mission countries.
Receiving reports and aiding victims and witnesses
In a few lines over at pp. 68-9 of the French-speaking version of the report (pp. 63-4 of the English-speaking version) it describes the “disappointment”, the “feelings,” and the contrasting “impressions” of victims and witnesses who have tried to alert members of the order about allegations of sexual violence.
This is an understatement, given that a victim is still reporting a real system of harassment led by the order’s leaders against him or herself; given that victims and witnesses are insidiously threatened, and given the threats, intimidation, slander, and reprisals following reports that were made mandatory by the order’s rules and by the Roman Catholic Church’s rules and regulations. I can personally testify on these issues, up until my dismissal from the order in June 2024.
These practices are not reveries from the past but are happening under the current leaders of the order, who are more willing to turn against those who report rather than resolutely addressing the issues and the numerous dysfunctions in the processes to deal with the issue.
Such practices, so contemporary that they literally happened before the eyes of the GCPS investigators, are not really likely to “free speech” within the order: the exorbitant cost that I am paying today for having come forward with specific reports on what has been happening in the order, has had the effect of preventing my colleagues who would have similar inclinations.
However, several current members of the order testify to the same practices, for having either brought reports to the attention of their superiors, or simply tried to get answers on current reports. One cannot simply dismiss these worrying practices at the order. The report makes no reference to this issue.
The reparation procedures offered to victims on mission
While French victims of order’s priests see the processing of their files assimilated and associated with the often still very deficient procedures of “recognition” and “reparation” within the Catholic Church in France, the report provides no information about the measures present or future for victims outside of France.
The reports provides no data on the number of victims on countries of mission despite knowing the identities of priests who could be aggressors, as to offer the victims some recognition and reparation. Such a gap, on the part of an order claiming to “protect the most vulnerable”, is simply shameful.
It is only a footnote on p.65 of the French version of the report (p. 60 of the English version) that talks about the possibility of getting in touch with the Commission for Recognition and Reparation (CRR), but there is no explanation as to how to approach said commission, something that, as of today, is almost impossible for the victims outside of France.
At this point one has to wonder why the French leadership of the Commission for Recognition and Reparation or the Conference of Religious Males and Females of France, the so-called CORREF, have not called out the Foreign Missions leadership on the way they deal with this issue.
Measures taken with regard to the priests implicated
The French version of the report indicates (p. 68, p. 63 of the English version) that several priests implicated, and still alive, are not under investigation to date and continue to exercise their duties in parishes and missions. It remains unknown if the reports dealing with their cases are in the report from GCPS, or if the current leaders of the order are aware of these cases.
We also do not have a specific number of cases falling under this category. This situation calls into question the alleged acknowledgment on the order’s side of the urgency of these situations; this attitude is akin to endangering potential victims. To delay setting out a clear policy in these matters, is simply criminal.
Conclusion
I will stop at this point. Whatever its shortcomings and the imperfection of its method, or the motives behind the report, the fact that we have now a report must be welcomed, as it is true that the statistics, however imperfect they may be, at least have the merit of giving in some way a form of existence to a reality that until now was largely ignored if not denied, which is the regrettable blind spot, by the way, of the Sauvé Report, otherwise very comprehensive: sexual abuse committed by priests and religious on mission is a reality affecting not only the Foreign Missions order.
I question all Roman Catholic missionary congregations, the orders linked to the Dicastery for Evangelization, which are still a long way from having some sort of preliminary inventory on the effects of abuse.
As it is, the Foreign Missions report from GCPS Consulting is not a progress report, but barely a starting point. Certainly not an epilogue, and the current superiors of the order should convince themselves of this very quickly, for fear that a new case involving one or more of the order’s members will soon come to contradict in fact the whole report and the solemn commitments in its final pages.
* Camille Rio is a French Roman Catholic priest. He was a member of the Foreign Missions order. For several years he served a mission parish in Ponouaipou, and Poblaki among other villages in the Karen country of Thailand. The website for the mission he used to run is still available in English here and in French here.
Translated from French to English and edited by Rodolfo Soriano-Núñez.