After the revelations, the sanction. This Thursday, December 2, the official bulletin of the Holy See announced that Pope Francis had accepted the resignation presented by Mgr Michel Aupetit, Archbishop of Paris.
This decision of the Pope follows a letter sent to him by Bishop Aupetit barely a week ago. At the end of November, Bishop Aupetit had handed in his resignation to the Pope after being accused in the press of having had an intimate relationship with a woman, which he denied. “I recognize that my behavior vis-à-vis her may have been ambiguous, thus suggesting the existence between us of an intimate relationship and sexual relations, which I strongly refute”, he had specified in the article of Point.
Revelations in the press
This resignation sent on Thursday, November 25 and which was to remain confidential, was revealed the next day by our colleagues from the Figaro. It comes after the publication, on Monday, November 22, of a dependent article in the weekly Point. The Archbishop of Paris is criticized there for his management methods in a number of cases. The weekly also claims that the archbishop had an affair with a consenting adult woman. Point evokes in particular an e-mail sent by mistake to his secretary in 2012, which the archbishop denies en bloc.
Michel Aupetit was promoted auxiliary bishop in 2013. Only a year later, he inherited a diocese in full, that of Nanterre. Three and a half years later, in 2017, the one who dreamed of himself “Country priest” is hoisted at the head of the most urban of the dioceses. The archbishop, who had to manage the fire of Notre-Dame de Paris in 2019, is known for his strict positions on the family and bioethics – he notably regularly supported the “Walks for life” hostile to voluntary termination of pregnancy. He also had a problem with homosexuals in 2012 during the debates on the ” marriage for all “.
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