Another Catholic leader accused of rape and targeted by justice

The name of a new figure in the Catholic Church in France could be added to the list of eleven bishops or former bishops “implicated” before civil or canonical justice. According The Parisian, the former vicar general of Nice, Mgr Guy Terrancle, 85, was also the subject of a report this summer.

A man now in his sixties accuses this diplomat, ecclesiastical adviser to the French embassy in the Vatican until 2022, of “repeated rapes” in particular while he was attending the French high school in Rome where the monk was chaplain. He went to Nice justice after a previous procedure launched in another jurisdiction and dismissed in 2019 because of the prescription, confirms to 20 minutes the public prosecutor of Nice. Xavier Bonhomme also indicates that investigations will soon be relaunched, in particular to “search for the existence of possible other victims”.

“It was that or I didn’t have to eat in the evening”

“Caught up in family problems, at the time I was very badly off my skin. He was brilliant. He played on my flaws. Terrancle said to me: it can’t be done, it’s not possible. And then he did. Anyway, it was that or I didn’t have to eat in the evening, ”explained in particular the fifty-year-old author of the report to the Parisian.

In a press release published on Thursday, the diocese of Nice “expresses its sadness and pain about the facts reported” and assures that “precautionary measures have been taken”. He specifies that it is to [son] initiative” that “two procedures are already underway following the information received, one civil with the Nice Public Prosecutor’s Office, the other canonical with the competent Roman authorities”.

For his part, Bishop Guy Terrancle said a few words to the editors of Nice morning, deeming these accusations “unthinkable”. “I am currently hospitalized. I am therefore not in a position to react in the heat, ”also declared the octogenarian.