PARIS (OSV News) — For Father Arnaud de Boissieu, a 75-year-old French priest who has publicly revealed that he was sexually abused at 17 by a Catholic layman, writing is therapy.
In a book titled “He Will Take Care of Me,” published by Editions Emmanuel, he recounts his spiritual journey since then, as he has tried to live with what he describes as a wound that is “impossible to heal.”
Served many mission assignments
Ordained a priest of the Mission de France prelature in 1981, Father de Boissieu was sent on missions to heavily de-Christianized areas. He worked with migrant farmers in Cameroon, street children in Tanzania and sailors on stopovers in Marseille in southern France, then in Casablanca, Morocco, where he still lives.
After 45 years of priestly ministry, Father de Boissieu still cries when recalling the assault. “I lived for half a century in a shocking denial of this trauma,” he told OSV News. “Today, I have extricated myself from it, but the wound is still raw.”
For Father de Boissieu, “writing is therapy.”
“This book brings together notes that I wrote for myself over the years,” he said. “My superior asked me to publish them. I hope they can help victims to put into words what they have suffered, and the others to better understand their suffering.”
Abuser ‘a socially respected figure’
He said his abuser was a socially respected figure he described as “a pious layman.”
“He was blind,” he said. “He was very involved in organizing outings for other blind people, including pilgrimages to Lourdes. He asked for help from young boys aged at least 15, whom he invited to his home under the pretext of organizing upcoming outings.”
Father de Boissieu recounted the assault discreetly.
“I did not understand what was happening,” he said. “I felt that it was not normal, but I did not react. If I had been warned, I would have defended myself, even if only with a gesture of refusal. That would probably have been enough to make the attacker back off. But I did nothing. I endured everything. I was like paralyzed.”
For years, he told no one.
After 35 years, ‘my silence cracked’
“I was in shock,” he said. “It was only 35 years later that the concrete sarcophagus of my silence cracked. One day, I read the words ‘sexual assault,’ and for the first time, I formally told myself that this was what I had suffered.”
From then on, he sought help from a psychotherapist, beginning what he called “a slow process of acceptance and reconstruction.” He also reconnected with an old friend who had volunteered in the same association for the blind run by his abuser.
“I told him what had happened to me,” he said. “To my horror, he replied that he had suffered the same thing.”
Outraged, Father de Boissieu later met his attacker.
‘Overwhelmed by such perversity’
“I naively hoped for something resembling an apology, or at least some kind of repentance,” he said. “But this encounter was terrible, even worse than the initial physical assault. This man turned the situation around, as if I were guilty of hurting him with misplaced accusations, because ‘that’s how he was’ and ‘it wasn’t his fault.’ He told me that he was going to pray for me, in the face of the wrong I had done to him! I left him feeling sick, overwhelmed by such perversity, which he displayed without the slightest remorse.”
Twenty years after that encounter, he said he is still struggling to “heal from this ignominy.”
“Today, he is dead, without the facts ever having been acknowledged,” he said. “For years, I wondered how I could live with such an offense, when justice had not been done.”
He said he eventually found “support” in reading the psalms.
Psalms with ‘cries of hatred’
“Many of them express a violence that corresponded to what I wanted to shout,” he said. “We usually read the psalms as hymns of praise and joy. But we omit passages that are terrible, with revolt and cries of hatred, which occupy a considerable place. The psalmist experienced terrible trauma. He screamed in pain, thundered with rage,” he said.
For Father de Boissieu, “hatred has its place in prayer.”
“We skip these verses, considered old remnants of violence that have nothing to do with our Christian faith,” he said of the psalms with such expressions. “But for me, these imprecations were a kind of exorcism, and a liberation. They allowed me to root out the depth of my pain.”
‘I forgive you’ is not automatic
He said, “Forgiveness is the foundation of the prayer that Christ taught us. But saying ‘I forgive you’ does not happen automatically. We do a lot of harm with automatic forgiveness. First, you have to measure the extent of the harm done. You have to go through that stage when you have suffered.”
In March, Father de Boissieu traveled to Paris to take part in restorative justice sessions provided to victims under French law. The sessions bring together victims and offenders from unrelated cases, along with mediators.
“I wanted to be able to ask aggressors face to face if they realized the harm they had done,” he said. “After that, I might be able to believe that God could forgive these evil beings, so unfathomable is his mercy. On the cross, Christ did not say that he himself forgave his enemies. He asked his Father to forgive them. Like him, I place this forgiveness in his hands, for I am incapable of granting it myself.”
Wound ‘will never disappear’
He said the wound “will never disappear,” but pointed to athletes in the Paralympic Games as an example.
“They do not hide their disabilities,” he said. “But they have learned to live with it, beyond their suffering. Their courage and joy really impress me and show me the way forward. I hope that I too can move forward from now on, beyond my wounds.”
On March 31, Pope Leo XIV invited the faithful through his Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network to pray for priests in crisis.
“In moments of fragility, it’s so important that we’re there for one another,” the pope asked in his monthly prayer video.
“This April, I invite you to join me in prayer for priests going through moments of crisis in their vocation. That they may find accompaniment and that communities may support them with understanding and prayer.”
Caroline de Sury writes for OSV News from Paris.
The post ‘Like Jesus on the cross’: Priest abused in his youth asks Lord to forgive lay perpetrator first appeared on OSV News.
