The never-ending turmoil in the Beatitudes community

Revelations concerning two priests from the Beatitudes, suspected of sexual assaults on young men, call into question the reform launched more than 10 years ago in this new community. "La Vie" looks at this complex story.

At the end of 2022, the members of the Beatitudes were beginning to take a breather. For two and a half years, their community had inherited the status of "ecclesial family of consecrated life" of diocesan right from the Vatican. Their statutes had been validated, their mission had been clarified and their functioning was in order. The years of crisis were over and done with. In the 2000s and up to the 2010s, they had seen a succession of revelations of spiritual abuse, abuse of conscience and sexual violence perpetrated by their founders and first leaders.

On January 12, 2023, a feeling of déjà vu comes over us when we read an investigation published by La Croix Hebdo: it details the accusations of sexual assault that have marked the career of two priests within the Beatitudes. One is now incardinated in the diocese of Albi and until recently officiated in the diocese of Toulon, after having been found guilty, in 2012, of "the crime of continuous sexual abuse without violence" during a canonical trial. The man who now calls himself Marie-Bernard d'Alès (he had previously taken the religious name Henri Suso and his baptismal name is Bernard d'Alès) was then ordered to undergo five years of psychological and psychiatric care and banned from approaching young people under the age of 25 for 10 years.

The other is Martin Silva, the current Assistant General (i.e. 'number two') of the Beatitudes community. The story is based on the statements of the victims of this priest when they were students at the Autrey boarding school in the Vosges in the early 2000s, the testimonies of many boarders at the time, as well as the minutes of two investigations by the Épinal prosecutor's office in 2002 and 2010. These last elements make it possible to bring to light that the man admitted to sexual touching of at least two teenagers for whom he was responsible and that the public prosecutor's office closed the case because it was time-barred.

After these cases, the man who had taken the religious name "Dominique Savio" changed to "Martin de Tours" or "Martin Silva". It was under this pseudonym that he returned to the communities run by the Beatitudes until he was elected to the governing body in 2015. If the ecclesiastical leaders of the last 15 years (the former bishop of the Beatitudes, Robert Le Gall, then Archbishop of Toulouse 

the former apostolic commissioner Brother Henry Donneaud

the former general moderator François-Xavier Wallays

Now a parish priest

declared to La Croix Hebdo that they had no knowledge of these prescribed facts, the President of the Community, Sister Anna Katharina Pollmeyer, 

answered that she had no knowledge of the case "except that the case was dismissed. These two cases, and the way in which they were subsequently handled, reveal that not everything is settled for the Beatitudes, created in the wave of new communities 50 years ago. (Cathcon: As religious life collapsed in the traditional orders, these new communities picked up the waifs and strays of cloistered life.)

A charismatic community born in 1973

At the origin of the Beatitudes, there is the Community of the Lion of Judah and the Immolated Lamb. Two young couples launched this group in 1973, bringing together single people and families with the desire to live like the first Christian communities. Collective life including the sharing of material goods, continuous prayer, worship inspired by American Pentecostalism, welcoming the marginalised: fully in line with the charismatic renewal movement, the members settled in Cordes-sur-Ciel, north-east of Toulouse.

Their charisma blends several traditions. The Beatitudes give an important place to Judaism, the "Lion of Judah" and the "Lamb slain" being bridges between the Old and New Testaments. It also includes elements of Carmelite and Byzantine spirituality.

Initially rather contemplative, the community developed a universal apostolate in the 1980s with the foundation of "houses" directed by "shepherds", often in former convents or deserted monasteries. An original mixed community life developed with religious and lay people living together, including families.

Initially rather contemplative, the community developed a universal apostolate in the 1980s with the foundation of "houses" directed by "shepherds", often in former convents or deserted monasteries. An original mixed community life developed with religious and lay people living together, including families. Vows of chastity, poverty and obedience were taken by some members, both consecrated and lay, who then took the religious habit. In 1991, they became the Community of the Beatitudes. By the 2000s, some 1,500 members were spread over some thirty countries, their mission becoming widely known through its publishing house. The community is becoming an essential part of the Catholic landscape.

Drifts and dysfunctional governance

At the same time, some of the first witnesses dared to question the situation. A series of revelations revealed sectarian aberrations, sexual abuse and paedo-criminality, and revealed dysfunctional governance. At the forefront of the cases shaking the Beatitudes is the "Pierre-Étienne Albert" case: this brother confessed to having sexually abused some sixty children over a period of almost 20 years. Close to the founder Gérard Croissant, known as Ephraïm, he organised stays for the children, even though his offences were known to his superiors.

Father Albert

Ephraïm

As for Ephraim himself, he was initially accused of negligence in the Albert case, but as the investigations progressed, it emerged that he himself had used his spiritual position to force nuns in his community to have sexual relations with him. His brother-in-law, Philippe Madre, general moderator of the community for 15 years, was also removed after complaints of sexual violence by persons in authority in the context of spiritual accompaniment. All of them were deprived of the clerical state (they were deacons) in 2007 and 2010 by a canonical decision.

It is now known that it was during this period that Jacques Marin, a priest of the Mission of France at the service of the Beatitudes, also assaulted the nuns and women he was spiritually accompanying. The bishop in charge of his community publicly acknowledged that he was guilty of "multiple abuses in the context of confession", although Jacques Marin died before the end of the judicial and canonical proceedings. At the same time, the first testimonies were given implicating the school Cours Agnès de Langeac, where Dominique Savio (Martin Silva's former name) is a 'shepherd'. These statements did not lead to a conviction.

To this accumulation of criminal facts, which for a time the community denied and fought with defamation lawsuits, were added alarms concerning the functioning of the communities' living quarters. The confusion between secular and religious vocations that coexist sometimes leads to tensions; the place of families had not been thought of and is becoming problematic; voluntary work and the absence of contributions deprive the members of their social rights, particularly with regard to retirement, even though they have had to give up working outside. Finally, dangerous therapeutic practices mixing the spiritual with the psychological, or even the psychiatric, are gradually being denounced.

15 years of reforms

At the end of the 2010s, the Vatican appointed a Pontifical Commissioner to supervise the Beatitudes and the community began a long process of reform.

Each branch (priests, nuns and lay people) is constituted and creates its own governance with its own representation that meets within a general council; the branches live in a more separate and autonomous way in the houses; the heads of families must, for example, keep a professional activity, and lay people, in general, are no longer allowed to wear the monastic habit.

On the eve of its 50th anniversary, after more than a decade of painstaking work and the departure of nearly half of its members, the Beatitudes community hoped to have healed its wounds and corrected its course. In the opinion of several specialists on aberrations in the Church, the will to bring this work to a conclusion was present and had led to real changes. However, even before the revelations about Martin Silva, questions remained about a past that did not seem to have been fully exposed and confronted. Some of the whistleblowers remain ostracised today; while other communities have been able to express an acknowledgement of their fault as an institution that failed to protect its

Source

A documentary in French containing some scenes from their extraordinary liturgical life

More than a whiff of a sect