In France, a body to "accompany" abuse victims, alongside the Church's own justice

On 1 September 2026 the Bishops' Conference of France set in motion the Iniave, the independent national body for the accompaniment of persons who are victims of sexual violence in the Church. Permanent and financed by a compulsory contribution from every diocese, it succeeds the Inirr, whose mandate ended the day before and which will remain active for some months to close the files already lodged. Its presidency is entrusted to Sophie Darbois, an honorary magistrate; the office of secretary general and spokesman goes to Stéphane Jacquot, a jurist of restorative justice. The body accompanies those who, as minors, suffered violence from a cleric or from a layman commissioned by a bishop, drawing on "restorative justice" and continuing the recommendations of the CIASE. The scheme was first to be called "Renaître," a name dropped after protest from victims' associations.

The Church never needed a new vocabulary to name this crime or to answer it. To lay hands on a child is a sin that cries for vengeance, and the Lord himself set its measure: "But he that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea."

The Catechism of the Council of Trent places under the fifth commandment the duty to defend the innocent, and under the sixth the purity God requires above all of his ministers. To the fault the tradition opposes two things together, never one without the other: justice, which judges and punishes the guilty, and charity, which raises up the victim. The penalty is not the denial of mercy; it is its condition, for no peace is restored unless the wrong is acknowledged, judged, and repaired.

The scheme states its own limits. It "replaces neither the justice of the State nor canonical justice," the only two able to qualify the facts and to condemn living perpetrators; it means to be welcome, listening, and accompaniment. Bishop Gérard Le Stang, who chairs the episcopal council for the protection of minors, describes its task: to "constitute and coordinate the network of accompanying persons, whether volunteers or salaried, to draw up its ethical charter, its training programme and its accompaniment framework, including the scale of the financial contribution," a witness group of victims being associated with the work.

The accompanying persons "answer only to this body, and not to the bishops." One notes the care taken to guarantee independence and a hearing; one notes also that reparation is organised beside the canonical forum, not within it. Yet it is the tribunal of the Church, applying her own law, that once degraded the criminal cleric and handed him to the secular arm. A body that accompanies without judging softens the hurt of victims; it does not render the justice the fault demands, and which the bishop, pastor and judge, owes to his flock.

Sources. Gospel according to Saint Matthew, XVIII, 6 (Douay-Rheims, from the Vulgate). Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566), on the fifth and sixth commandments, and on the sacrament of Penance. Dom Guéranger, "The Liturgical Year," office of the Holy Innocents.