A priest sexually assaulted schoolchildren from Saint Augustine to Bitche for a quarter of a century
Father Joseph Didelon, the died in 2021 at the age of 85, was professor of mathematics from 1968 at the Saint-Augustin high school in Bitche, a renowned Catholic institution in Moselle, and beyond, which closed in 2012. We have identified and exchanged with a dozen victims, and all tell the same experience: it is exclusively men, schooled at the boarding school in 6th and 5th ("the little ones"), from the late 1960s to the early 1990s. They suffered repeated touching on the part of this priest, without him being worried for all these years.
"How is it possible ? How could so many children have been abused in this way? Why don't we say it? Who could have prevented this from happening? Why have we not been protected?" asks Louis.
We actually met a former supervisor of the boarding school who wants to remain anonymous. He claims that everyone knew the attraction of abbot Didelon for young boys. He said he regretted today that "the omerta that reigned prevented everyone from speaking".
Louis tried a few years ago to tell a former student friend of Saint-Augustin who became a priest today, and who has responsibilities within the Church in Moselle. He's been disgusted by his reaction. "He told me of all that he had experienced joyfully, and I told him why I was unhappy. I told him about the touching I had suffered. The only answer I got was 'Life is not a long, quiet river'. This is a double sentence, another sentence. What a laconic answer! On the one hand, there are all these public efforts: we recognize that there have been victims. On the other hand, it seems that this system still exists today. People close to the diocese, who have or have had responsibilities in relation to the sexual assaults of priests, have done nothing. I doubt a real mea culpa. It will take a new generation of priests and religious for this to change profoundly."
https://www.francebleu.fr/infos/faits-di...le-8009900
Father Joseph Didelon, the died in 2021 at the age of 85, was professor of mathematics from 1968 at the Saint-Augustin high school in Bitche, a renowned Catholic institution in Moselle, and beyond, which closed in 2012. We have identified and exchanged with a dozen victims, and all tell the same experience: it is exclusively men, schooled at the boarding school in 6th and 5th ("the little ones"), from the late 1960s to the early 1990s. They suffered repeated touching on the part of this priest, without him being worried for all these years.
"How is it possible ? How could so many children have been abused in this way? Why don't we say it? Who could have prevented this from happening? Why have we not been protected?" asks Louis.
We actually met a former supervisor of the boarding school who wants to remain anonymous. He claims that everyone knew the attraction of abbot Didelon for young boys. He said he regretted today that "the omerta that reigned prevented everyone from speaking".
Louis tried a few years ago to tell a former student friend of Saint-Augustin who became a priest today, and who has responsibilities within the Church in Moselle. He's been disgusted by his reaction. "He told me of all that he had experienced joyfully, and I told him why I was unhappy. I told him about the touching I had suffered. The only answer I got was 'Life is not a long, quiet river'. This is a double sentence, another sentence. What a laconic answer! On the one hand, there are all these public efforts: we recognize that there have been victims. On the other hand, it seems that this system still exists today. People close to the diocese, who have or have had responsibilities in relation to the sexual assaults of priests, have done nothing. I doubt a real mea culpa. It will take a new generation of priests and religious for this to change profoundly."
https://www.francebleu.fr/infos/faits-di...le-8009900
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
