A French archbishop has publicly criticized the appointment of a priest convicted of rape as chancellor of the Archdiocese of Toulouse, calling the appointment was “unacceptable and untenable.”
Archbishop Hervé Giraud of the Diocese of Viviers criticized the appointment of Fr. Dominque Spina in the Toulouse archdiocese, which caused uproar among French Catholics earlier this month first in a social media post on July 21 and then again in an interview with the magazine La Vie, published the following day.
RELATED: French Bishop Appoints Convicted Child Rapist As Chancellor
The archbishop said he was “appalled by this appointment,” and called his intervention over the decision of a brother bishop an expression of “fraternal correction.”
Toulouse’s Archbishop Guy de Kerimel, who made the appointment, has argued that Spina’s nomination as chancellor, despite a 2006 conviction for raping a 16 year-old, was an expression of “mercy” and did not amount to a promotion.
“Who should show mercy? I don’t think a bishop can show mercy without taking into account the victims… It’s not simple because we must also look after the priest’s future, but there are many other ways to open up a path in life for him,” Giraud said in the interview.
Continue reading at The Pillar