According to prosecutors and legal authorities, a priest from northwest France has been accused of drugging and raping a 15-year-old boy that he allegedly met on the gay dating app Grindr. The priest from a small parish near Rennes was charged with aggravated rape and drugging the minor after the two met in Paris last week using Grindr. RTL radio reported that the 50-year-old pastor offered the minor several drugs in a hotel room, including the ecstasy-derivative MDMA and a substance that resembled GHB, a notorious drug frequently used in date rape. Later, the youngster became ill and informed his friends.
The case is the most recent in a string of allegations of sexual assault that have severely damaged the French church. Following a report last year that revealed the shocking extent of priestly sexual abuse in recent decades, the confessions of a cardinal earlier this week shocked French Catholics once more.
A judicial inquiry was started after one of the most prominent Catholic officials in France, Jean-Pierre Ricard, admitted to ‘reprehensible’ behaviour with a ’14-year-old girl in the 1980s. Additionally, ten additional active and retired bishops were accused of sexual misconduct, according to church officials. He routinely visited the city to meet guys for drug-fueled hotel hookups, according to the priest from Rennes. He refuted the rape allegation by claiming that the kid had indicated on his Grindr profile that he was older than 18.
The archbishop of Rennes, Pierre d’Ornellas, said in a statement, ‘I can understand how men and women would be upset by this situation,’ adding that he had informed the Vatican about the arrest and accusations. A church-led study that published its results in 2021 concluded that during the previous seven decades, 216,000 youngsters had been sexually molested by clergy.
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