Archbishop Michel Aupetit (former) Archbishop of Paris
Relationship with a woman was 'ambiguous'
Relationship with a woman was 'ambiguous'
© Ludovic Marin / AFP
Probably the last thing the French Catholic Church wanted right now was another sex scandal involving a senior cleric, but that's just what they've got in the form of Archbishop Michel Aupetit, (former) Archbishop of Paris, who has resigned following the revelation that he had a sexual relationship with a women, despite his vow of celibacy and his requirement that all those under him in his archdiocese take the same vow.
The story of the consensual relationship was exposed by Le Point magazine. Aupetit denied that he had had a sexual relationship with the woman but told Le Point that the relationship was 'ambiguous' - a neat euphemism for clandestine sexual relations with a woman outside marriage and contrary to his oath as an ordained Catholic priest.
This came on top of the recent report which revealed that 3,000 French Catholic priests had sexually abused more than 200,000 children over the past 70 years and that there had been a widespread, systematic cover up. When abuse by lay members of Catholic schools and other institutions was taken into account, the number of abused children, almost all of which were young boys, rose to some 330,000.
