French archbishop resigns after parishioners’ protests
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Strasbourg Archbishop Luc Ravel’s top-down style had alienated many parishioners and other Roman Catholic Church officials.
PHOTO: AFP
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STRASBOURG – The archbishop of the eastern French city of Strasbourg said on Thursday he had resigned, after complaints about his management led to the Vatican opening an investigation.
“Since peace is the highest good... I have presented my resignation to the Holy Father, for whom I pray every day,” Archbishop Luc Ravel said in a statement sent to AFP, referring to Pope Francis.
The Vatican last June ordered an inspection of the Strasbourg diocese, the results of which have not yet been released.
But Catholics in the region told AFP earlier in April that Monsignor Ravel’s top-down style had alienated many parishioners and other church officials.
“Monsignor Ravel decides everything all by himself,” said Mr Jean-Paul Blatz, the leader of the Jonas d’Alsace group that has organised protests against the archbishop.
“He sees the bishop as a general who gives orders to his priests, who in turn give orders to the laypeople. It’s a very pyramidal view of the Church, but things don’t work like that any more.”
Monsignor Ravel was especially resented for removing women and laypeople from different councils in his diocese and installing traditionalist priests with opinions counter to their congregations, theologian Marcel Metzger, a professor at the University of Strasbourg, told AFP.
Strasbourg is unusual in the Roman Catholic Church, as under a treaty known as the Concordat dating back to Napoleon Bonaparte, the French government officially appoints an archbishop chosen by the Vatican.
The Roman Catholic Church in France is reeling from a string of sexual abuse scandals and the findings of a 2021 inquiry that suggested 216,000 minors had been abused by clergy since the 1950s.
