Jean-Pierre Grallet, former archbishop of Strasbourg, admitted this Wednesday, November 16 to be one of the 11 former bishops recently implicated for reports of sexual violence.
“At the end of the 1980s, when I was a Franciscan religious, I had inappropriate gestures towards a young adult woman”. This sentence was written by Jean-Pierre Grallet, former Archbishop of Strasbourg, in a press release made public this Wednesday, November 16. The clergyman does not give any details on the facts attributable to him, but he indicates that he was aware during the summer of 2022 of a statement from the alleged victim, having then contacted her to “tell him that (he) had
The nature of the “inappropriate gestures” mentioned is not determined, but Jean-Pierre Grallet is indeed one of the 11 former bishops implicated for reports of sexual violence which Bishop Éric de Moulins-Beaufort had mentioned on November 7 in Lourdes. . The actions of Bishop Grallet are also the subject of a criminal justice investigation.
The current Archbishop of Strasbourg, Mgr Ravel, wrote a reaction statement, qualifying as “serious” the facts recognized by the respondent. Bishop Ravel clarified that this violence had been committed “against a young adult woman at the time of these events, and which dates back to the fall of 1985 when he was a priest”. And to add: “These facts were brought to my attention by the victim in December 2021. I made a report to the Prosecutor of the Republic of Strasbourg in January 2022. The Roman authorities have also been seized. These investigations are ongoing”.